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THE 
 
 WISDOM OF GOETHE 
 
Wisdom is the principal thing ; therefore get wisdom : and 
 with all thy getting get understanding.— Proverbs iv. 7. 
 
THE 
 
 WISDOM OF GOETHE 
 
 JOHN STUART BLACKIE 
 
 EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 MDCCCLXXXIII 
 

TO THE 
 
 REV. WALTER CHALMERS SMITH, D.D. 
 
 A LARGE-HEARTED PREACHER, 
 
 A GENEROUS THEOLOGIAN, 
 
 AND A HEALTHY-MINDED POET, 
 
 THIS MANUAL OF WISE WORDS, 
 
 FOR GUIDANCE IN FRUITFUL ACTION 
 
 AND SOUND THINKING, 
 
 Es ©etiicatEti 
 
 BY HIS OLD FRIEND 
 
 THE EDITOR. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 , PAGE 
 
 PREFACE, ix 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY OF GOETHE'S LIFE, xvii 
 
 ESTIMATE OF THE CHARACTER OF GOETHE, . xxi 
 
 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS, ... I 
 
 RELIGION, 55 
 
 POLITICS, 93 
 
 LITERATURE — POETRY, I07 
 
 PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS, LOGIC, TRUTH, AND 
 
 SCIENCE, 149 
 
 NATURE — NATURAL HISTORY, . . . .179 
 
 ART, 199 
 
 WOMEN 223 
 
 EDUCATION AND CULTURE, .... 233 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 There is nothing fills me with more sorrow occa- 
 sionally than to see how foolishly some people 
 throw away their lives. It is a noble thing to live ; 
 at least a splendid chance of playing a significant 
 game — a game which we may never have the 
 chance to play again, and which it is surely worth 
 the while to try to play skilfully; to bestow at 
 least as much pains upon as many a one does on 
 billiards or lawn-tennis. But these pains are cer- 
 tainly not always given ; and so the game of life is 
 lost, and the grand chance of forming a manly 
 character is gone ; for no man can play a game 
 well who leaves his moves to chance ; and so, in- 
 stead of fruitful victories, brilliant blunders are all 
 the upshot of what many a record of distinguished 
 lives has to present. The only remedy for this 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 evil that I know is to impress on young men with 
 all seriousness that life, though a pleasant thing, is 
 no joke; and that, if they will go to sea without 
 chart, compass, or pilot, they have a fair chance 
 to be wrecked. But who is to impress such a 
 lesson ? Some name with authority, of course ; 
 for the individual, like the great world, is governed, 
 as Goethe well says, by wisdom, by authority, and 
 by show ; and, though wisdom is wisely put first 
 in this triad of directing powers, it is on authority 
 that the great masses of men have to rely, when 
 they look out, as they must do, in nine cases out 
 of ten, for a guidance outside of their own experi- 
 ence ; for authority is the form that wisdom must 
 always take, before it can be generally recognised 
 and become permanently influential. Now every 
 age has its own authority, as in other regions, so 
 specially in the domain of the conduct of life ; and 
 in the present age I have found no name whose 
 utterances have a better chance to be generally 
 accepted than the great German poet - thinker, 
 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. His wisdom is 
 generally acknowledged, even by those who enter- 
 tain the most unfavourable views of his char- 
 acter : and having, in my own personal experience, 
 had reason to thank God that at an early period of 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 my life I became acquainted with the writings of 
 this great man, it occurred to me that I could do 
 no better service to the intelligent youth of this 
 generation, for whose benefit it has been my duty and 
 my pleasure to work through a long life, than to lay 
 before them in a systematic form his most significant 
 dicta on the important problems of sound thinking 
 and noble living. In doing this I had as my starting- 
 point that admirable book, Eckermann's Conversa- 
 tions with Goethe ; which I believe I was the first 
 to introduce to the British public, some forty or fifty 
 years ago, in the pages of the ' Foreign Quarterly 
 Review,' and which has since found its way exten- 
 sively into English hands, through the translation 
 of Mr Oxenford. Next to that, invaluable stores 
 were found in the 'Reflexionen und Maximen,' in 
 the papers entitled ' Gott, Gemiith, und Welt,' the 
 ' Venetian Epigrams,' the ' Weissagungen des Bakis,' 
 and 'The Four Seasons.' Among the larger works, my 
 principal extracts were made from 'WilhelmMeister's 
 Lehrjahre and Wanderjahre,' from the 'Wahlver- 
 wandtschaften,' from 'Faust,' 'Tasso,' 'Iphigenia,' 
 and the ' NatUrliche Tochter,' ' Hermann and 
 Dorothea,' and the 'West-Eastern Divan.' ^ Spe- 
 
 1 From the article in ' Blackwood's Magazine,' December 
 1882, by J. S. B. 
 
xii PREFACE. 
 
 cial aid also I derived from the well-known and 
 valuable collections of Lancizolle,^ as also from 
 ' Goethe as Naturforscher,' by Meding : Dresden, 
 1861. 
 
 It was my desire in putting this little work before 
 the pubhc to leave the great poet to state his own 
 case, and to make that impression on the unbiassed 
 reader which words of true wisdom flowing into 
 the soul, like healthy breezes into free lungs, natu- 
 rally make. But I soon became aware that, in the 
 case of Goethe, few unbiassed readers were likely 
 to be found on this side of the. Channel ; and I 
 could not conceal from myself the fact that the 
 good impression to be made by the wise words of 
 the preacher might be seriously neutralised by the 
 bad impression they entertained of his character. 
 If it has been the good fortune of some great men 
 to have had their virtues brought forward into the 
 foreground, studiously dressed out and magnified, 
 while their vices are cast into the shade and for- 
 
 ^ (i.) ' Geistesworte aus Goethe's Briefen und Gesprachen :' 
 Berlin, 1853. 
 
 (2.) 'Geistesworte aus Goethe's Werken ; ' second en- 
 larged edition: Berlin, i860. This is the book with re- 
 gard to which Bunsen wrote : " Pray read Goethe's ' Geistes- 
 worte ; ' they are prodigious ■' " 
 
 (3.) ' Uber Goethe's Verhaltniss zu Religion und Christen- 
 thum :' Berlin, 1855. 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 gotten or forgiven, no less certainly has the repu- 
 tation of others suffered from their faults having 
 been prominently flaunted before the public eye, 
 not seldom exaggerated into gross vices, while their 
 no less real virtues were^ ignored or explained 
 away. This unfortunate fate seems to have fol- 
 lowed Goethe, at least under the action of English 
 optics. The judgments which I constantly hear 
 in this country pronounced on the character of 
 this great man always recall to me a story illus- 
 trative of a certain style of criticism, which I 
 picked up many years ago from Coleridge's ' Bio- 
 graphia Litteraria.' Two English young gentlemen, 
 fresh from college, and brimful of conceit, as is 
 natural in such creatures, were contemplating Dan- 
 necker's well-known sculpture of " Bacchus and 
 Ariadne," one of the principal lions in Frankfurt- 
 on-the-Mayne. Says the one to the other, " What 
 do you think of that, Bill ? " to which Bill forth- 
 with, putting his eye-glass to his eye, and there- 
 after looking up knowingly, replied, " I think it is 
 d — mned like Stilton cheese," pointing, by this 
 remark, to a certain blue streak in the marble 
 which unfortunately had revealed itself, not till the 
 work was too far advanced to allow of a replace- 
 ment. Besides this easy habit of an assumed 
 
xiv PREFACE. 
 
 superiority, so natural to empty minds, there is in 
 the case of Goethe the unquestioned fact of a 
 great gap between the EngHsh and the German 
 mind, which even EngHshmen of large culture and 
 high principle find it difficult to overbridge. The 
 Englishman — and I include my brother the 
 Scot here under the general name — is character- 
 istically a man of action, not of contemplation. 
 As such he puts forth his force emphatically in 
 certain definite lines, within which the idea after 
 which he is striving must realise itself: this makes 
 his habit of mind rather constitutional than phi- 
 losophical, his religion more ecclesiastical than 
 spiritual, his statesmanship guided more by ex- 
 ternal expediency than by internal principle ; and 
 above all things he is a denouncer of sentiment, 
 enthusiasm, and what Napoleon called ideology. 
 The German is the reverse of all this. He is 
 cosmopolitan in his range, contemplative in his 
 habit, and emotional in his temper. The eager 
 struggle of political parties, into which the English- 
 man puts so much of his moral life, to a thought- 
 ful German makes itself felt as a disturbing force ; 
 while the delicate blossoms of the emotional and 
 assthetical element in our nature, which the Eng- 
 lishman denounces as sentimentality, the German 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 cherishes as a kixury and cultivates as a religion. 
 Two such opposite types of national character, as 
 soon as they come near enough to provoke a 
 mutual estimate, naturally produce a clash : and 
 in this way the English, who in their days of intel- 
 lectual isolation — days yet fresh in the memory of 
 living men — gloried in simply despising the Ger- 
 mans, now that the current of events has brought 
 with it a general necessity of international recog- 
 nition, too often make this recognition through a 
 thick atmosphere of misconception and a strong 
 tincture of prejudice. I therefore thought it my 
 duty, in justice both to my author and to my 
 readers, to pave the way for the reception of his 
 sage maxims and wise warnings, by a short esti- 
 mate of his character as a man and a citizen. 
 This I have done with all patience ; and — though 
 I hope in the main with that warm sympathy and 
 kindly appreciation without which all critical esti- 
 mates are null — at the same time with a determina- 
 tion to blink no ugly questions, and to whitewash 
 no offences which it was impossible to deny. 
 
 I intended at one time to have added a short 
 biographical sketch of the poet's life ; but consid- 
 ering how well this field has been already worked 
 by Mr Lewes, and in a more portable form by Mr 
 
xvi PREFACE. 
 
 Hayward,^ the accomplished translator of ' Faust,' 
 as also in an English translation of Duenzer's life of 
 the poet, at present being issued by Macmillan, 
 I have thought it unnecessary to swell this little 
 volume with any matter of this kind. I have only, 
 therefore, added a short chronological view of the 
 poet's life, divided into its great distinctive periods 
 with a few synchronistic names, which may be use- 
 ful for many readers, living as they do at the dis- 
 tance of more than a century and a quarter from 
 the date of the poet's birth. 
 
 In conclusion, let me return my warm thanks to 
 Messrs Chapman & Hall, Piccadilly, and Messrs 
 George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden, 
 London, for the handsome manner in which they 
 have allowed me to use Carlyle's translation of 
 ' Wilhelm Meister,' and Oxenford's ' Conversations 
 of Eckermann,' for the purposes of this work. All 
 the other extracts, whether in prose or verse, were 
 translated by myself directly from the German. 
 
 Edinburgh, March 1883. 
 
 1 Foreign Classics for English Readers : Goethe. By 
 A, Hayward. Edinburgh : Blackwood — 1878. 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY 
 
 OF 
 
 GOETHE'S LIFE. 
 
 I. 
 
 BIRTH AND BOYHOOD. 
 
 Born at Frankfurt-on-the-Mayne, . . 1749 
 
 Seven Years' War — Frederick II., . . 1756 
 
 Birth of Schiller and Robert Burns, . . 1759 
 
 II. 
 
 STUDENTSHIP. 
 
 Leipzig University, 1765 
 
 Maria Theresa and Joseph II., . . . 1765 
 Strasburg — Cuvier and Wellington born, . 1769 
 Sesenheim — Frederika — Birth of Words- 
 worth and Sir W. Scott, . . . . 1770-71 
 
xviii CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY 
 
 III. 
 
 LAW AND LITERATURE. 
 
 Wetzlar — Lotte — Coleridge born, . . 1772 
 
 ' Gotz von Berlichingen,' .... 1773 
 
 'Werther'— Robert Southey born, . . 1774 
 
 Lili, 1775 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE WEIMARIAN APPRENTICESHIP. 
 
 Karl August — Frau von Stein, . . . 1775-76 
 Public business — Court service — Various 
 minor w^orks — Gradual growth of his 
 great classical works, .... 1776-85 
 
 V. 
 
 ITALY. 
 'Iphigenia' — 'Egmont,' .... 1787 
 
 VI. 
 
 MARRIAGE AND DOMESTICATION. 
 
 Christiana Vulpius — Byron born, . . 1788 
 
 French Revolution — 'Roman Elegies' — 
 
 'Tasso,' 1789 
 
 Prussian campaign in France — 'Optics,' . 1792 
 
OF GOETHE S LIFE. xix 
 
 VII. 
 
 SCHILLER AND GOETHE. 
 
 Correspondence with Schiller, . . . 1794 
 
 ' Venetian Epigrams ' — ' Comparative Anatomy,' 1795 
 
 ' Hermann and Dorothea,' .... 1797 
 
 'Optics,' 1800 
 
 Benvenuto Cellini — 'The Natural Daughter,' 1803 
 
 Death of Schiller, 1805 
 
 VIII. 
 POLITICAL TROUBLES. 
 
 Battle of Jena, 1806 
 
 ' Faust,' 1806 
 
 ' Elective Affinities ' — Tennyson born, . 1809 
 
 Liberation War, 181 3 
 
 'West-Eastern Divan,' . . . .1814-15 
 
 Battle of Waterloo, 181 5 
 
 Natural Science and Morphology, • . 1820 
 
 'V7. Meister's Wanderjahre,' . . . 1821 
 Various literary, critical, and artistical works, 1822-31 
 
 Second Part of 'Faust'— Death of Sir W. Scott, 1831 
 
 Death, March 22, 1832 
 
 Death of Cuvier, 1832 
 
ESTIMATE 
 
 CHARACTER OF GOETHE 
 
 '* Voilct un ^^///w^/"— Napoleon. 
 
ESTIMATE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CHARACTER OF GOETHE. 
 
 I. The elements and forces that build up a man's 
 genius and form his atmosphere and his environ- 
 ment are of two kinds, internal and external. The 
 internal are what we popularly call his talents and 
 capacities, his intellectual strength, his emotional 
 sensibility, his volitional force, his muscular force, 
 his power of endurance, his self-control, his moral 
 courage, and suchlike ; the external factor is com- 
 posed of the moulding and plastic influences of the 
 family, the Church, the school,. the State, the so- 
 ciety, the country and climate. The race to which 
 a man belongs, and the nationality out of which he 
 grows, are in some sense part of both factors ; for 
 partly, as being bred in the bone and nourished in 
 
xxiv ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 the blood, they are a constituent element of the 
 individual, helping to make him what he is ; partly 
 they may be considered as a sort of atmosphere 
 which he breathes, but which is distinct from the 
 individual self. The internal forces which con- 
 stitute the individual are of course the strongest 
 and the most emphatically pronounced in those 
 exceptional characters whom history notes as great 
 men ; for it is precisely the inherent and original 
 force of their character which makes them great, 
 and places them so far above the masses of the 
 aggregate to which they belong, that they may often 
 not unjustly boast that they have created the cir- 
 cumstances of which they who follow them become 
 the slaves : for always and everywhere the charac- 
 ters of men must be moulded to a great extent by 
 the circumstances, moral and physical, which sur- 
 round them, against which a certain reactive and 
 plastic force from within will be put forth in direct 
 proportion to the active energy and self-assertive 
 virtue of the individual. Viewed in this aspect we 
 shall find that, while in respect of racial character- 
 istics and national character Goethe was pre-emi- 
 nently a representative German — as distinctively 
 a German as Voltaire was a Frenchman ^ and So- 
 
 ^ To Lewes's remark that Goethe is "more Greek than 
 German," Mr Hutton (Essays, ii, 76) makes the discrimi- 
 nating comment, that "what Lewes had in view was the 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. xxv 
 
 crates a Greek — he was at the same time possessed 
 of such singularly original force and rich complete- 
 ness of character as to have led his people over 
 from a state of feebleness and dependence on 
 foreign influences into a state of firmly rooted 
 native growth, luxuriant blossom, and beneficent 
 fruitage. Of course he was not alone, nor even 
 first in this great work, as the names of Lessing, 
 Klopstock, Wieland, Herder, and others sufficiently 
 show. But he was unquestionably the great mas- 
 ter-builder, without whom the edifice of German 
 intellectuality could never have received that 
 homage of general European admiration which 
 has from the commencement of the present cen- 
 tury been so willingly or unwillingly conceded. 
 
 II. So far as topographical influences could 
 help to make a great German man, Goethe was 
 in the highest degree favoured in having Frank- 
 furt for his birthplace. Politically and historically 
 that city was to Germany what London is to Eng- 
 
 heathen element in his character, while his cast of mind is 
 strikingly and distinctively German, far more than Schiller's." 
 This is true ; but perhaps Lewes had also in view the form 
 and tone of the 'Iphigenia,' 'Tasso,' and 'Hermann and 
 Dorothea,' which seem to find their prototypes in Sophocles 
 and Homer, rather than in any modern poetical works. It 
 must be borne in mind also that Goethe's character pene- 
 trates, his works as deeply as his genius commands them. 
 
xxvi ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 land, or Edinburgh to Scotland. Time-hallowed 
 memories of famous emperors of European signi- 
 ficance, from Charlemagne down to Rudolph of 
 Hapsburg and Maria Theresa, haunted its quaint 
 old streets, and inscribed its gilded rolls; pictur- 
 esque processions of provosts and pipers, and mu- 
 nicipal horsemen in medieval garb, proclaimed the 
 annual gathering of its fair, where the vendors of 
 the most various wares from East and West spread 
 forth the products of their several countries to the 
 public gaze, and fed the imagination of the curious 
 and intelligent youth of the place with the vision 
 of a richly peopled and variously cultured world, 
 outside the narrow bounds of their German home. 
 In respect of society it presented as various and 
 freely pulsing a world as could be found in Germany 
 in that age of political decadence and impending 
 reconstitution ; in respect of the beauties of nature 
 and the charms of landscape, if surpassed in sub- 
 limity and picturesqueness by some other notable 
 towns of the richly varied Fatherland, it was far 
 removed from the monotonous flatness of Berlin 
 and Munich, and had green wealth enough, either 
 in its immediate vicinity or within easy reach, 
 to satisfy the sesthetical demands of a healthy 
 appetite. 
 
 III. In respect of parentage Goethe furnishes a 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. xxvii 
 
 Strong proof of the remark that men of great genius 
 have generally, if not always, been the product of 
 sound and well - conditioned parents. Goethe's 
 father and mother were both in many respects 
 above par ; and, like Marcus Antoninus in his diary, 
 he has gratefully recorded the special good gifts 
 and qualities which he received by inheritance 
 from his parents. ^ From his father he received a 
 musculine seriousness of intellect, and a severe 
 love of order in all things j from his mother, quali- 
 ties even more valuable — a freshness of spirit, a 
 cheerfulness of temper, a capacity of enjoyment, 
 a vivid fancy, a fluent tongue, a firm trust in God, 
 a habitual avoidance of all fret about the past or 
 anxiety about the future, and a courageous grap- 
 pling with the task of the hour.^ 
 
 IV. In his education he was peculiarly happy, 
 
 ^ Von I Vater kab'' ich die Statu?', 
 Des Lebcns ernstes Fichren ; 
 Vovi Miittcrchen die Frohnatiir 
 Und Ltist zu fabuliren, 
 
 which we may render thus : — 
 
 My goodly frame and earnest soul, 
 
 I from my sire inherit ; 
 My happy heart and glib discourse, 
 
 Was my brave mother's merit. 
 
 ^ Frail Rath : Briefwechsel von Katharin Elizabeth Goethe. 
 Von Robert J^ei/. Leipzig : 1 87 1 . 
 
xxviii ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 as his intelligent and well-educated parents took 
 that living interest in it, which, when accompanied 
 with sense and moderation, always makes father 
 and mother the best of schoolmasters. Under their 
 kindly hands, besides the traditional orthodoxy of 
 Latin and Greek, he became early familiar with 
 French and English, and particularly Italian, for 
 which language his father — and the son after him 
 — had a special preference, and which he culti- 
 vated not only for its literature, but in connection 
 with the works of ancient and modern art, of which 
 Italy had always been the storehouse and the 
 nursery. It need scarcely be remarked that this 
 early familiarity with ancient and modern lan- 
 guages in the hand of such a highly endowed 
 youth could not fail to be of singular use in wid- 
 ening his range of thought beyond narrow local 
 influences ; while it gave him a ready key of en- 
 trance into the larger world, where is found the 
 only remedy for those limitations of thought, in- 
 adequacies of sentiment, and awkwardnesses of 
 manner, from which home-bred youths are never 
 wholly free. 
 
 V. When Goethe, at the age of seventeen, was 
 sent to the University of Leipzig, as a student of 
 law, — a profession which had been chosen for him 
 by his father, rather than dictated by his own 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. xxix 
 
 genius, — his destiny as a poet, a literary man, a 
 philosopher, a man of science, and an artist — for 
 all this lay in him — became sufficiently manifest. 
 On a temperament keenly alive and delicately 
 sensitive all round to every touch of human sym- 
 pathy, social attractions and personal charms acted 
 more strongly than academical lectures or critical 
 dissertations; philosophy, general history, natural 
 history, anatomy, art, anything rather than the cold 
 abstractions and bloodless formalisms of law, were 
 tasted and assimilated, as opportunity might offer 
 or appetite invite ; but to be laced up in the Span- 
 ish boots of any systematic course of prescribed 
 reading, in scholastic fashion, was utterly abhor- 
 rent to the large freedom, innate spontaneity, and 
 electric sensibility of the young poet.^ High 
 original talent, capable of stirring deeply the best 
 
 1 Of course it is obvious that the free range of spontane- 
 ous impulse which may be the only sure guidance of a youth 
 of strongly pronounced original genius, might be the ruin 
 of commonplace persons, who demand an external law to 
 complement the deficiencies of their natural character ; at 
 the same time, I believe there is no greater error in the 
 training of youth than to proceed on the principle that 
 nothing should be spontaneously evolved, and everything 
 externally imposed on the opening mind. The multiplica- 
 tion of examinations, one of the marked tendencies of the 
 educational features of the age, has a strong tendency to 
 overload the appetite, while it demands only a stimulant, 
 and to cramp the intellect which craves for expansion. 
 
XXX ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 instincts of a poetical nature, is no doubt fre- 
 quently to be found in the Chairs of the German 
 universities; but at Leipzig, in the days of his 
 undergraduateship, the academical representatives 
 of a flat century had not attained that stature 
 which could have enabled them to exercise any 
 permanent influence on such a lusty young Titan 
 as Wolfgang Goethe — who was accordingly left in 
 a great measure to himself, and that healthy in- 
 terchange of thought and feeling with well-con- 
 ditioned young persons of both sexes, which is, 
 after all, the atmosphere most favourable to ju- 
 venile development. 
 
 VI. The quick and ready sensibility of a nature 
 open at all pores to every human sympathy, which 
 we have just noticed in this young student, was 
 the most potent factor in the formation of his 
 character ; a sensibility not only on the emotional 
 side, expanding into loves and friendships of the 
 most rich and varied character, but in its intel- 
 lectual action also stretching forth feelers of the 
 most many-sided sympathy, appropriation, and 
 assimilation. He was not, like some men of fine 
 genius, a dainty feeder, with a confined range of 
 taste and a broad sweep of aversions : but, as a 
 man with a stout stomach, though he well knew 
 to discriminate good from bad, yet he could enjoy 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. xxxi 
 
 and digest many things ; and refused systemati- 
 cally to pamper himself on a few favourite dainties 
 of sentiment, which by repeated action might 
 weaken the digestive faculty it seemed to refine. 
 Hence he could never either think, or feel, or act 
 independendy of his environment ; and his course 
 of activity, though radically, no doubt, proceeding 
 from what he was, depended in each individual 
 case on where he was. His was a nature to 
 learn from everybody, and to be touched by every- 
 thing ; he had " a grand zest of living " ; ^ and put 
 forth loving arms in all directions freely, in order 
 to live largely. The present, as he says, had always 
 a most powerful influence upon him : and it were 
 well for all of us if it were more so ; for the present 
 moment is all that we can use in the full enjoy- 
 ment of our vitality; the present opportunity, if 
 not utilised while it lasts, is gone for ever ; of the 
 past, memory, with all its magic, can only present 
 us with the dimmest shadows — while he who lives 
 much in the future lives largely in dreams which 
 never can be realised, or in anticipations which 
 may often be disappointed. This broad and many- 
 sided receptiveness of mental constitution brought 
 Goethe at an early period of his career into con- 
 nection with men of the most various and opposite 
 characters ; men very different from himself, but in 
 ^ Crabb Robinson's Diary^ vol, i. chap, xviii. 
 
xxxii ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 whom he could always find something to enjoy, 
 and something to learn. Such men were Herder, 
 Jung Stilling, Lavater, Basedow, Jacobi, Merck, 
 and many others. This capacity for friendship, 
 and grateful recognition of everything good and 
 attractive in his fellow-beings, accompanied him 
 through life; and made him, as he advanced in 
 years, the centre to which all the best intellects 
 and the noblest characters in Germany, and not 
 a few beyond the bounds of Fatherland, naturally 
 gravitated. Nor were his sympathies in any case 
 confined to mere human loves and affections. A 
 deep sense of religion, and a profound reverence 
 for hallowed old tradition, were fundamental 
 traits in his character; and, though with no pre- 
 tensions to orthodoxy, and with more of the artistic 
 Greek than of the Hebrew prophet or the Chris- 
 tian preacher in his temperament, the careful 
 student of his works, not hasty to take offence at 
 isolated passages, will acknowledge in the greatest 
 of German poets the most loving student of the 
 Bible, and the warmest appreciator of the great 
 scope of its teaching. In addition to this he com- 
 bined a large capacity of vital and social enjoy- 
 ment with a profound conviction of the serious- 
 ness of life, and a sacred regard for the responsi- 
 bility which the possession of extraordinary talents 
 imposes on those who employ them. Thus richly 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. xxxiii 
 
 furnished with all that the largest love and the 
 most loyal reverence can supply to stimulate and 
 to elevate a human soul,^ he lived and died, not 
 without hard work indeed, and hard struggles, 
 much less untouched by the envy which always 
 waits upon merit, especially in the first steps of its 
 ascent, but in the end emphatically a rich man ; 
 rich in friends, ^ rich in love, rich in insight, and 
 rich in good works — the only kind of wealth which 
 a reasonable man should desire to be possessed of 
 in any large quantity.^ 
 
 ^ Crabb Robinson, as above, notes that "in his youth he 
 appears to have had something even of religious enthusiasm," 
 and he would like to know how he lost it. He lost it, as he 
 lost his Wertherian sentimentality, and as all healthy-minded 
 persons lose the high-strained enthusiasms of their youth ; but 
 he did not therefore lose his religion. Enthusiasm is a term 
 that in the estimation of Englishmen generally means a faulty 
 excess. 
 
 ^ Hutton, in his admirable essay above quoted, talks as if 
 Goethe had small capacity for friendship. But this is true 
 only of a particular kind, of clinging and engrossing friend- 
 ship which to some minds is a necessity. That Goethe did 
 not require a friend, as some do, to look up to, was the neces- 
 sary consequence of the Olympian character of his intellect. 
 Jupiter on his throne may have many favourites, but no 
 fellows. 
 
 2 To the general charge of "moral indifference" brought 
 against the great poet by Hutton and others, and to the asser- 
 tion that he is altogether a stranger to the ideas of guilt, 
 repentance, and remorse, I can in no wise subscribe. The 
 poet's notion about a profitable repentance is expressed in 
 
xxxiv ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 VII. The quick and ready susceptibility of 
 which we have just spoken, might naturally have led 
 > — and has, in fact, not seldom led — poetic natures 
 
 die following lines from "Edwin and Elmiia," one of his 
 eadiest productions : — 
 
 " If it be noble in our hearts to keep 
 The memory of our faults, and weigh them well, 
 And in their room plant virtues, nevermore 
 Can it be right and praiseful with long fret 
 For past misdeeds to undermine the heart 
 And lame the springs of action." 
 
 Here we have, in a few words, all that can justly be said 
 about confession of sin, the burden of guilt, and repentance. 
 There cannot be the slightest doubt that Goethe repented of 
 his follies and misdeeds as honestly as other people do ; and 
 the poem from which these lines are translated, as well as 
 his earliest production, "Die Launen der Verliebten," are a 
 public confession of guilt — guilt in reference to the self-willed 
 jealousy with which he tormented his first love, Katlierine 
 Schonkopf. So also, in the autobiography, he confesses 
 not to have been without compunctions with regard to his 
 conduct in giving up Frederika ; and we can only admit 
 so much of truth in the charge of habitual self-satisfaction 
 brought against him, that he did not think it right to indulge 
 largely in sorrow for past sins, because dwelling on the evils 
 of the past, when the past cannot be remedied, can only 
 serve to lame the hand for the present, and to dim the pros- 
 pect for the future. ^^ Lass das Vergangene vergangen seyn " 
 is a maxim which he gives as a rule for a happy life, and 
 which, when systematically acted on, leaves no room for 
 prolonged exercises of sorrow for past misdeeds. It must 
 be admitted, however, that the poet, in the second part of 
 ' Faust, ' not only wisely tempers, but seems altogether to 
 overlook, the sorrow for sin that ought to have been felt 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. xxxv 
 
 into a sort of emotional dissipation and abandon- 
 ment, which, if it does not end in vice and moral 
 ruin, is certainly fatal to all true manhood. If it 
 
 and expressed by a sensualist of Faust's quality, before he 
 was admitted into the fellowship of the "saints made per- 
 fect." No doubt repentance is best expressed by deeds, 
 and that is what Goethe meant ; but M'ords have their rights, 
 as in the expression of every liuman emotion, so specially 
 under the sense of guilt. The deficiency of this expression 
 in the second part of 'Faust,' and elsewhere, it may be, in 
 the poet's works, is to be explained from two considerations : 
 (i) the predominance of the aesthetical artistic above the 
 moral in his intellectual constitution ; (2) the length and 
 breadth of his deep sympathy with humanity, which inclined 
 rather to overlook or pity the moral aberrations of his fellow- 
 sinners than to condemn them. That the painter and the 
 preacher do not readily feel together ; and that a pre- 
 dominant tendency to the one function tends to subordinate, 
 and sometimes to misprize and to ignore the other, all ex- 
 perience teaches. The narrowness of the finite creature 
 Man will in fact have it so. How large a segment of the 
 complete circle of Goethe's heart the fine arts were, his life 
 and writings emphatically declare. A striking example of 
 this we have in the little poem on the great Diana of the 
 Ephesians, in which his conservatism and his love of nature 
 combine with his love of art to make him the apologist of 
 the heathen goldsmith in his workshop, and to leave the 
 fervid apostolic preacher outside in the cold. Again, if a 
 large and catholic sympathy with humanity be, whether 
 poetically or socially considered, one of the most enviable 
 qualities of the human soul, like other virtues it has its limits, 
 and when exerted beyond these limits necessarily becomes a 
 vice. The virtue which this catholic sympathy begets, in its 
 legitimate exercise, is toleration ; the vice into which it grows. 
 
xxxvi ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 be the glory of a young man to flap his wings joy- 
 ously and prove his strength, it is the business of a 
 grown man to hold the reins tightly and to control 
 
 by excess or misapplication, is indifference. With this moral 
 indifference Goethe may sometimes seem chargeable ; but 
 fundamentally it is not so. His large human sympathy 
 leads him to love the sinner, not to be indifferent to the sin. 
 In the Venetian Epigrams, where a light and careless tone, 
 sympathetic with low Italian life, prevails, he says : — 
 
 ^^ Greatest saints, we know, have been the most kindly to sinners: 
 Here I'm a saint with the best ; sinners I never could hate." 
 
 And this leads us directly to the main objection urged to the 
 novel of the 'Elective Affinities,' that it makes vice attrac- 
 tive, and those who practise vice more interesting than the 
 practisers of virtue. But here also we have a superficial 
 judgment and a hasty conclusion. It is quite true that the 
 two sinful parties in this novel are not represented as very 
 repulsive personages ; on the contrary, one of them, the 
 lady, is drawn as a person of very remarkable sensibility and 
 intelligence. But they are not represented as wise persons — 
 rather as the slaves and victims of unreined emotions ; and 
 for this reason they are both hurried into ruin. The novel 
 is a social tragedy of the deepest dye, of which the moral is 
 the sanction of the civil bond of marriage — a bond so strong, 
 that whosoever treats it lightly, even with the most plausible 
 advocacy of sentiment, cannot escape the severest penalty. 
 The amiable character of the offender only makes the tragic 
 situation more intense, and the sanction of the moral law 
 more imperative. The reader who does not see this moral 
 in the novel is incapable of an sesthetical judgment : he con- 
 demns a part because he has not the range of thought to 
 comprehend the whole. A similar objection was made to 
 the ' Sorrows of Werther,' It was supposed to inculcate the 
 suicide which it was written to condemn. Fervid passion 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. xxxvii 
 
 the steeds. This essential feature of every admir- 
 able human character we find in Goethe strongly 
 pronounced : however violently moved by pas- 
 sionate impulses from time to time, he never lost 
 
 without the steady control of sober reason leads to ruin. 
 This is the moral of 'Werther,' of the 'Elective Affinities,' 
 as of our 'Hamlet.' In fact, in all tragedies the greatest 
 sufferers are not represented as odious. Hamlet is not 
 odious — noble rather ; but he is not wise. The moral of 
 the ' Elective Affinities ' is far more plain than the moral 
 of 'Hamlet.' Why, then, did people not see it? Simply 
 because, as already remarked, they took offence at a small 
 part, and forthwith condemned the whole. It was the old 
 trick of hasty critics, which drew down the ridicule of 
 Coleridge— viz., judging the sculpture by the blue spot in 
 the marble. The spot, of course, had better not have been 
 there ; but the criticism was infinitely silly nothing the less. 
 The only question is, why a wise man like Goethe should 
 have deliberately chosen to insert an objectionable passage 
 into his narrative, which was in no wise necessary to make 
 an effective story? The simple answer to this is, that Goethe 
 was too much of a pious worshipper of nature, in the sense 
 of the best Greeks, to have been always sufficiently alive to 
 the demands of certain delicate sensibilities, which have their 
 root in the associations of the modern mind rather than in 
 the absolute nature of things. This remark applies with 
 equal force to the ' Roman elegies ' and to certain passages 
 of 'Wilhelm Meister.' With regard to these offences against 
 good taste, we must simply say that the mind of the philo- 
 sopher was not in perfect harmony with the feelings of a 
 popular audience, — that he might have been to a certain ex- 
 tent touched with the low standard of the flat age in which 
 he was born and bred, — two misfortunes, the one belonging 
 to the individual, the other to the epoch, for which allowance 
 will naturally be made by an equitable judge. 
 C 
 
xxxviii ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 his balance ; the equipoise of the soul became the 
 watchword of his practical philosophy ; and though 
 the vessel of his fate, suddenly seized by the sweep- 
 ing blast, might plunge and reel notably on occa- 
 sions, the man at the helm was always there, with 
 his head above the waves and his hand on the tiller. 
 Self-control and self-mastery were as supreme in 
 Goethe as in the breast of the sternest Stoic and 
 the most severe Quietist: So much so, indeed, 
 that those who have had no experience in them- 
 selves of this combination of moral contraries, in 
 which all true greatness of character consists, have 
 not been slow in Goethe's case to confound the 
 cool control of manly reason with the cold and 
 calculating selfishness of unsympathetic and un- 
 social minds. But to judge thus is to judge the 
 oyster from the shell. The hardness of the ex- 
 ternal in this case does not exclude, but includes, 
 the internal softness. 
 
 VIII. Poetical minds fall naturally under two 
 great classes — those whose imagination is moved 
 more powerfully by the sublime, and those who 
 breathe more comfortably in the atmosphere of the 
 beautiful. Of the former class ^schylus and 
 Michel Angelo may be taken as types; of the 
 latter, Sophocles and Raphael ; and to this latter 
 Goethe belongs. Of course the beautiful does not 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. xxxix 
 
 imply, according to Burke's unhappy confusion 
 with the pretty, anything small — for the sea is 
 beautiful shining in the sun, the sun is beautiful 
 in its setting, and the jElowers of the field and the 
 leaves of the trees beautiful in their abundance. 
 To Goethe the sight of any beautiful object was 
 like delicate music to the ear of a cunning musi- 
 cian ; he was carried away by it, and floated in 
 its element joyously, as a swallow in the summer 
 air, or a sea-mew on the buoyant wave. Hence 
 the rich story of Goethe's loves, with which 
 scandal, of course, and prudery, have made their 
 market; but which, when looked into carefully, 
 were just as much a part of his genius as Faust or 
 Iphigenia, a part without which, indeed, neither 
 Faust nor Iphigenia could possibly have been 
 written. To a poet a beautiful woman always pre- 
 sents the most irresistible attraction : partly, no 
 doubt, as with prosaic persons, because she is a 
 woman and he a man, the one by nature plainly 
 meant to be both the contrast and the complement 
 of the other ; partly also, and much more, because 
 he is a poet, who both sees more sharply, and feels 
 more keenly, and pictures more vividly the beauty 
 of God's most beautiful piece of workmanship in 
 the world of reasonable creatures. Let no man 
 therefore take offence when I say roundly that 
 Goethe was always falling in love, and that I con- 
 
xl ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 sider this a great virtue in his character.. Had he 
 not done so, he would not have been half the man, 
 nor the tenth part of the poet that he was. The 
 only question here is, not how often he fell in love, 
 for that is the part of accident, but how he com- 
 ported himself when he did fall in love ; for love, 
 no doubt, like wine, is a thing that requires deli- 
 cate handling, and, though essentially noble in 
 its launch, if not well piloted, may often lead to 
 most ignoble conclusions. The first notable love- 
 affair of Goethe^ was that universally known one 
 with Frederika, the parson's daughter of Sesen- 
 heim, in the hill-country near Strasburg ; and from 
 which, it must be confessed, that Goethe, who was 
 then a student preparing for his law degree at 
 Strasburg, did not come off with an altogether clear 
 reputation. Every English person has made up 
 his mind — without much inquiry perhaps, but still 
 very decidedly — that Goethe jilted this delightful 
 young lady in a very shameful way ; that he ought 
 to have married her ; and that he was well served 
 for his ungentlemanly abandonment of so worthy 
 a creature, by the less worthy specimen of her sex 
 
 1 There was a prior one at Leipzig with Anna Katharina 
 Schonkopf, his landlord's daughter, called KdUhen—hwi that 
 was too juvenile an affair to call for serious consideration, 
 and passed oif quite innocently and happily for both parties. 
 The lad was not in a condition to dream of marriage, and 
 the girl had too much sense to wait for him. 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. xli 
 
 into whose connubial toils he afterwards fell. I 
 agree with this charge partly, but in no wise alto- 
 gether. In endeavouring to pass a calm judgment 
 on this capital charge — for the others are of minor 
 'significance — we must bear in mind that at the 
 time of the entanglement the poet was a young 
 man, a mere student — an undergraduate, as they 
 say in Oxford — without any fixed profession or posi- 
 tion. In this unripe state he fell in love with the 
 parson's daughter, as only a Goethe or a Burns 
 could fall in love, and the parson's daughter fell in 
 love with him. This love went the length of kiss- 
 ing, and a tender correspondence of three months' 
 duration ; after which, as a thing of course, in the 
 natural progress of such affairs marriage ought to 
 have followed. And why did it not follow ? simply 
 because Goethe was a boy and not a man, and 
 could not expect to get his parents' consent to the 
 connection, or to make himself independent of that 
 consent, unless he made up his mind to devote 
 himself soul and body to the legal profession as 
 a means of maintenance, which he would have 
 looked upon as an act of intellectual suicide, and 
 he was secretly determined not to do. We must 
 bear in mind also that, though a boy in years, 
 Goethe was a full-grown man in intellect ; that, as 
 we observed above, in his constitution extreme 
 sensibility was coupled with an extraordinary power 
 
xlii ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 of cool survey; and however intensely he might 
 love, he could never be such a slave to passion as 
 not to know that hasty and ill-considered mar- 
 riages of young persons without any firm footing 
 in the world, have often been productive of an 
 amount of misery through life, that far outweighed 
 the pain of an early renunciation. We may ob- 
 serve, also, that every strong virtue in a man's char- 
 acter naturally, and sometimes necessarily, with 
 the unavoidable change of circumstances, be- 
 comes a vice : and thus Goethe's extreme sensi- 
 bility to his present environment, which was one 
 of his greatest excellences, while it made him the 
 most devoted of lovers in the presence of the fair 
 one, necessarily exposed him to the charge of 
 fickleness and variability when absent. A largely 
 sympathetic nature will scarcely die of one lost 
 love, while there is another quite near to supply its 
 place. The man who during a long life can love 
 only one woman, or live on one idea, is intense 
 but narrow \ like a sun, that should radiate only in 
 one line, and, when that line fails, sinks into total 
 night. Marriage under such circumstances and 
 with such feelings was unadvisable; and he accord- 
 ingly tore himself away with bleeding heart from 
 the object of his affection. There was no fault, 
 therefore, in breaking off the engagement, or rather 
 in refraining to enter into an engagement which 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. xliii 
 
 circumstances refused to recognise ; the fault lay- 
 in the length of that very serious flirtation, to use 
 a profane word, in which the poetical youth had 
 allowed himself to indulge, and which he ought to 
 have known could not be indulged in without in- 
 flicting a sore wound on an innocent female heart, 
 not in any wise so readily curable as such wounds 
 are in the rougher bosom of the male, and in the 
 versatile susceptibility of a poetical temperament. 
 So far, therefore, Goethe was guilty in this matter ; 
 and like, an honest man, as he was, in his auto- 
 biography distinctly says so ; but in a young man 
 and a poet, and a first love-aflair, a certain amount 
 of guilt of this description is not so uncommon as 
 that we should feel ourselves called upon studi- 
 ously to intensify its hue and magnify its propor- 
 tions. At all events, neither the unhappy lover 
 himself, nor the good pastor's family, seemed to 
 have looked upon the afl"air with the same severity 
 of condemnation in which the English pubUc has 
 delighted to indulge ; for, when the poet a few 
 years afterwards revisited the scene of his first 
 idyllic affection, he was received by the deserted 
 object of his early love and her family in a fashion 
 that indicated the silent sorrow rather than the 
 moral indignation that had remained as the sting 
 of the ill-starred adventure. ^ 
 
 ^ Had Goethe been guilty of the gross moral delinquency 
 
xliv ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 Of the Other loves of Goethe, that with Charlotte, 
 the well-known heroine of 'Werther,' with Lili, 
 and the Baroness von Stein, and Christiana Vulpius, 
 who ultimately became his lawful wife, are the 
 most famous, — the only ones, in fact, that re- 
 quire special notice, so far as a vindication of the 
 poet's character in matters of the heart is con- 
 cerned. His passion for Charlotte was an affair 
 on which not even a shadow of slander can rest. 
 Shortly after the young poet had transported him- 
 self for a season from Frankfurt to Wetzlar, in 
 order to carry on, or seem to be carrying on, a 
 superficial training in the subsidiary practice of the 
 Imperial Chamber of Justice there, his fancy was 
 charmed with the combination of natural sweet- 
 ness, sprightliness, and domestic virtue manifested 
 in the character of Charlotte Sophia Henrietta 
 Buff, the golden-locked and blue-eyed daughter 
 of Henry Adam Buff. But no sooner had the fine 
 ecstasy of young love towards this fair creature 
 begun to stir the nerves of the sensitive poet, than 
 
 in the matter of Frederika with which his severe English 
 ci-itics love to charge him, could he have written 'Clavigo' so 
 shortly afterwards, or at all ? The combined selfishness and 
 cowardice of the principal character in this tragedy could 
 scarcely have been portrayed in such vivid characters by a 
 man M'ho had deliberately been guilty of a similar baseness. 
 Goethe's conduct in the Sesenheim affair was prudential ; 
 Clavigo's in the tragedy is treacherous. 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. xlv 
 
 he found out that the lady was engaged, or on the 
 point of being engaged, to another — the Brunswick 
 Councillor of Legation, John Christian Kestner, 
 the father of the late Hanoverian minister in Rome. 
 This discovery, of course, put an end to all thoughts 
 of marriage; but the passion could not be so 
 easily killed. Such a condition of things with a fiery 
 lover, under a tropical sun, would infallibly have 
 led to a stoppage of all intercourse, or to something 
 very tragical or very bad. But the German nature is 
 more kindly, more considerate, and more cool ; so 
 the intercourse of all the parties went on in this case 
 as before — the bridegroom showing no jealousy, the 
 bride a great amount of good sense, and the out- 
 side lover a great amount of self-command and 
 strict repression of feelings that it would have been 
 dishonourable to harbour. But Goethe was no 
 Stoic ; so he found it wisest at last to flee from the 
 fascination, and give vent to the torture of an un- 
 tenable position in a novel of sentiment. The 
 next entanglement, with Lili, as she is called in the 
 poet's lyrical works, was of an altogether different 
 character; and though it contained nothing that 
 could in the slightest degree be called dishonour- 
 able, was ineffective in its results, and called forth 
 in its conduct certain traits of instability and un- 
 reliability in the character of the poet, for which he 
 can scarcely hope to receive forgiveness, at least 
 
xlvi ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 from the ladies. Anne Elizabeth Schonemann — the 
 heroine of this second passion that, as in the case 
 of Frederika, went to the point of marriage, but 
 there halted — was the daughter of a rich Frank- 
 furt banker, beautiful, accomplished, and extremely 
 fascinating in her manner, and not without a slight 
 touch of coquettish playfulness that only made her 
 the more attractive. She belonged, also, to a soci- 
 ety a little above the platform on which Goethe's 
 family moved; and the brilliance of the fashion- 
 able saloon life, to which the young poet was for 
 the first time introduced in her circle, might doubt- 
 less, as a novelty (for otherwise Goethe did not 
 specially care for West-End manners), contribute to 
 the power which she soon began to exercise over 
 him. A mutual attachment soon revealed itself; 
 and, as soon as revealed, the hindrance to a happy 
 issue loomed in view. The parents on both sides 
 were rather averse to the union : those of the 
 lady because, in the fashion of the moneyed 
 classes, they preferred to look up in the social 
 scale for a son-in-law rather than down ; those of 
 the gentleman because, as ^schylus has it in the 
 ' Prometheus,' unwise is the man who forms a con- 
 nubial relation with a woman above his own rank in 
 society. However, the disparity in this case was 
 not so very great, and the opposition of the parents 
 on both sides, by the intervention of a deft match- 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. xlvii 
 
 making lady, was so far overcome that it only re- 
 quired a stroke of decision on the part of the poet 
 to drive a conclusive nail into the business. But 
 the decisive stroke was not there. Why? The 
 answer to this is not very clear, — as clearness, in- 
 deed, is not always easy in these matters, even to 
 those who have the sharpest sight : but partly, we 
 may conjecture, because the catholic fashion with 
 which the bright, young, and fair one dispensed her 
 charms may have excited emotions of mistrustful 
 jealousy on the part of her imperious lover; part- 
 ly because unfavourable reports of the catholic 
 sensibilities of the gentleman may have reached 
 the ears of the lady, with no weakened emphasis ; 
 partly because the parents of both parties, origin- 
 ally unfavourable, from whom an unwilling sort 
 of assent seems to have been extorted, may have 
 continued to send down a certain breath of 
 indifference not favourable to decisive action ; 
 pardy because in these matters delay gives time 
 for consideration, which is fruitful in suggesting 
 difficulties ; partly because the lover in this case, 
 though more now thun a student, was not yet 
 planted on such a firm stage of social independ- 
 ence as to enable hini to encounter and to command 
 the very perplexing and often disagreeable array of 
 preparatory circumstances by which the narrow 
 porch of real marriage is fenced off from the 
 
xlviii ESTIMATE OE THE 
 
 flowery field of ideal love \ — but, whatever the 
 secondary causes may have been that prevented 
 the fair summer blossom of this love from bear- 
 ing its natural fruit, the primary cause unquestion- 
 ably was the want of decision and determination 
 on the part of the lover. Another man of more 
 passionate quality and more military directness of 
 character could have made short work of all ob- 
 structions in such a state of matters, as easily as a 
 boy walking through a corn-field would knock off 
 the heads of the thistles with a stick. But God had 
 made Goethe of different stuff. His power of self- 
 survey and self-command was as remarkable as 
 his extreme susceptibility. With such natures the 
 passion of to-day readily turns over into the deliber- 
 ation of to-morrow; and as it has been observed 
 that a council of war never fights, so it may hold 
 true that a council of love never marries. What 
 turned the scale finally in the case of Lili was the 
 appearance in Frankfurt of the Grand Duke of 
 Weimar, a young prince, full of that fine, fresh, 
 and frolicsome vitality which Goethe loved. The 
 prince and the poet at once became brothers ; and 
 nothing would please the former but that the latter 
 should follow him to his neat little Saxon capital, 
 and assist him to enjoy life and to conduct busi- 
 ness there. This offer Goethe willingly and wisely 
 accepted ; not, of course, because he cared particu- 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. xlix 
 
 larly for courts, or had a hankering after titled per- 
 sonages, which was not at all in his nature, but 
 rather because he was of an adventurous spirit, and 
 was desirous above all things to escape from the 
 small ways and cramping limitations that belonged 
 to the life of a legal practitioner in Frankfurt. In 
 the year 1775, when the destined hierarch of Ger- 
 man literature was in his twenty-sixth year, he 
 found himself settled for life in the, to him, alto- 
 gether new scenes of the capital of one of the 
 numerous tasteful little princedoms of the Father- 
 land ; and with this new scene, new thoughts, new 
 feelings, new enjoyments, and new duties crowded 
 upon him, and overwhelmed him in such a masterful 
 way, that the image of Lili, like that of Frederika, 
 faded sweetly into the vague distance of the past ; 
 and marriage with the Frankfurt banker's daughter, 
 or with any other woman, was for ten busy years, 
 for reasons that we shall now proceed to describe, 
 the last thing thought of by the rising young Jupiter 
 of the Teutonic Olympus. 
 
 Before coming to Weimar, Goethe had received 
 from a Hanoverian physician — Zimmermann, the 
 author of the once widely read book on Solitude — an 
 account of a lady of great beauty and greater accom- 
 plishments attached to the Court of Weimar. The 
 admiration with which her portrait inspired him 
 readily rose into a passion, when he looked on the 
 
1 ESTIMATE OE THE 
 
 fair reality face to face ; for from that face there 
 looked forth an eye of that rare quality "which 
 sees everything as it is, and looks on everything with 
 love " — an eye that could belong only to a woman 
 in whose moral constitution was revealed that cun- 
 ning combination of solid sense, high principle, 
 and refined sentiment which is found in the most 
 completely harmonised characters ; and which was 
 the ideal the young poet had all along been feeling 
 after, and now at last seemed to have found. 
 
 The Baroness Charlotte von Stein was the wife 
 of a respectable gentleman attached to the Court 
 of the Grand Duke in the capacity of Stallmeister^ 
 master of the horse, groom of the archducal 
 stables, or in whatever phrase the English version 
 of the German title may delight. Goethe's previ- 
 ous loves were mere girls, on the sweet primrose- 
 borderland between sixteen and seventeen. Char- 
 lotte von Stein was a woman past thirty years of age, 
 fully six years older than the poet. She was a lady 
 of high station, beautiful, gracious, talented, accom- 
 plished, womanly, sympathetic with the rising liter- 
 ature of Germany, a faithful wife, a good mother, a 
 constant friend, and in every way attractive. This 
 was the lady, a heau ideal of fully developed and 
 finely harmonised chaste womanhood, whose potent 
 graces were destined to pour a healing balm into 
 the heart of Goethe, bleeding as it still was from 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. li 
 
 the recently disturbed relations with Lili ; and pre- 
 pared by nature for the still nobler function of 
 fostering and training the great representative 
 genius of her country's literature, and affording 
 to him a constant source of spiritual consolation 
 in the trying circumstances of his early career at 
 Weimar. For trying circumstances unquestion- 
 ably they were to a man of his genius, to whom 
 Court ceremonies and the details of official admin- 
 istration were only a little less disagreeable than 
 the routine of a petty legal practice which he had 
 left behind him at Frankfurt. During the whole 
 weary ten years, of what the Germans call his 
 Weimar apprenticeship, his beloved Charlotte, with 
 whom he lived on the most intimate footing — 
 in fact a sort of recognised member of the family 
 — acted as a wise father-confessor to the poet ; 
 the one person in Weimar to whom he looked 
 habitually as at once the inspirer of his purest 
 inspirations, the chaste chastiser of his follies, the 
 sweetener of his harshest labours, and the com- 
 forter of his sharpest sorrows. In the lives of few 
 men has love — without which a true poet cannot 
 live — taken such a noble form, and defied the 
 power of such adverse circumstances to blast it ; 
 and perhaps it was precisely the very high strain 
 with which this Platonic passion acted on the 
 spiritual part of his nature, to the utter exclusion 
 
lii ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 of Other elements of his humanity, that, under 
 altered circumstances, produced the reaction in a 
 different direction, which it is now my duty to 
 record. 1 
 
 ^ Of course I am aw^are that the world generally, from its 
 habitual want of charity in such matters, and Mr Lewes 
 specially, in his Life of Goethe, has expressed himself very 
 differently as to the nature of the relation between the 
 passionate young poet and this celebrated Court beauty. 
 But after a study of the published correspondence, and a 
 consideration of the character of both the parties, and the 
 nature of the circumstances, I see nothing to warrant the 
 uncharitable judgment which may lightly be pronounced 
 on this matter. The poet, with his extraordinary suscep- 
 tibility to beauty and goodness in every shape, had, as we 
 have seen on a previous occasion in the affair of Wetzlar, 
 had the misfortune to be powerfully fascinated by the 
 charms of a woman wdio was betrothed to another man ; 
 but he behaved on this occasion with the most perfect 
 honour, never attempted to conceal his admiration from the 
 destined husband, and when he found that he could stand 
 the disturbing fascination no longer, took safety in flight. 
 A similar temptation from Brentano's wife he resisted in the 
 same manly way (Duenzer, p. 202). But retreat in this 
 shape was not possible at Weimar ; once attached to the 
 Court there, the high-strung young poet and the high-toned 
 lady in whom he had at last found his ideal of womanhood 
 were condemned to see one another every day. What 
 was to be done ? Of course a poet, to whom the wor- 
 ship of his ideal is a moral necessity, could not cease to 
 love ; and the lady would have been more than human had 
 she remained persistently insensible to the worship paid to 
 her by such a man, and to the inspiring and elevating influ- 
 ence of intellectual communion with him. Like not a few 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. liii 
 
 That a man in the full vigour of manhood, full 
 of fervid passion, and in all respects, physical, 
 intellectual, and moral, perhaps the most com- 
 plete man that the recent centuries have set their 
 eyes on, should have remained unmarried till an 
 age closely bordering on forty — ten years more 
 than the mezzo cammiti di nostra vita of which 
 Dante speaks — is a phenomenon not exactly be- 
 longing to the normal state of things, and, in 
 
 wives of fine intellectual sensibilities, she had an appetite for 
 spiritual nourishment, which her husband, a commonplace 
 man of business, could do nothing to gratify. She therefore 
 made up her mind, securely cased in her own virtue, and 
 with the full privacy of her husband, to admit the fascinating 
 stranger into her family circle on the most intimate terms, 
 and to be his bosom friend and confidential adviser in all 
 that was most dear to his heart. Every woman could not 
 have done this ; but let the uncharitable world for once 
 believe that Charlotte von Stein was an exceptionally good 
 woman, as Goethe was, I am firmly convinced, an exception- 
 ally good man. No man had a more profound respect for 
 the sacredness of the marriage - tie ; and it is in no wise 
 probable that a writer who wrote a novel with the acknow- 
 ledged moral of the famous text, Matthew v, 28 (see this 
 volume, p. 125), would have passed ten years of his life in 
 direct contravention of it. I may add that Mr Hutton, in 
 the little that he says about the connection with the Baroness 
 von Stein, hits the key-note in this case equally becoming to 
 a judicious biographer and a good Christian. "There is no 
 need to judge the matter at all," says he. " It is almost the 
 only case in which Mr Lewes paints another in dark colours, 
 without justification, for his hero's sake." — Essays, ii. 70. 
 d 
 
liv ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 Goethe's case, only to be explained by the powerful 
 charm which the accomplished Baroness exercised 
 over him. So long as the poet lived in Weimar, 
 under the somewhat oppressive and repressive 
 action of Court life and administrative duty which 
 overlaid him there, and so long as such a superior 
 woman as this his second Charlotte was present 
 with the daily balm of her chaste love to pour 
 into his wounds, marriage was out of the question. 
 But the permanence of this delicate relation de- 
 pended, as in the case of everything human, to 
 a certain extent on the permanence of the cir- 
 cumstances out of which it arose ; and so, when 
 Goethe, to shake off for a season the burden of 
 secular affairs, which had encroached largely on 
 his poetical activity during the ten years of his 
 first Weimar service, at length obtained leave to 
 plunge into the sea of sunny nature and artistic 
 grace, for which he had long sighed, in Italy, it 
 could not be otherwise than that a new and 
 more lusty life should well up within him, which 
 made him more independent of the soothing 
 balm poured into his soul from his fair confessor. 
 After nearly two years of voluptuous communion 
 with nature and stimulant study of art in Rome, 
 and other centres of refined attraction and rich 
 historical association in the land to which all ideal 
 passion naturally gravitates, Goethe returned to 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. Iv 
 
 Weimar a wider, a broader, and a stronger man, 
 and a man certainly over whom a single woman, 
 even a woman of such high character and rare 
 accomplishment as Charlotte von Stein, could not 
 hope to exercise such an exclusive sovereignty as 
 had long been conceded to her, or, to speak more 
 accurately, rather forced upon her by the poet. The 
 consequence was, on their meeting again, a marked 
 coolness compared with the fervour which had 
 glowed at their parting; a sensible loosening of 
 the bonds which once held them together as strong 
 as adamant ; and then an open expression of dis- 
 satisfaction on the part of the lady, to which Goethe 
 could make no satisfactory reply. He wished, no 
 doubt, the old relation to continue ; but he was 
 too honest to say that it could continue under the 
 same condition of absolute dependence. He was 
 in every way a more happy and a more life-enjoy- 
 ing mortal than he had been, when he left the 
 object of his Platonic affection. He might say 
 nothing : but women are quick to observe, and, 
 like Churchmen, fond of power; and the lady 
 in this case had been too long accustomed to an 
 unqualified sovereignty over the greatest intellect 
 and the biggest heart of the time to be willing to 
 hold the reins of his affection with a less absolute 
 sway. What happened may readily be divined. 
 Emancipated, partly by a biennial absence, and 
 
Ivi ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 partly by the unconcealed coolness, and, as Goethe 
 thought, unmerited reproach on the part of his 
 Platonic love, the tendency towards a non-Platonic 
 attachment, such as common mortals practise, and 
 many look upon as the only legitimate kind of love, 
 resumed its natural sway : and so one pleasant 
 morning, when the poet was in a happy humour, 
 taking a walk in the Park at Weimar, there tripped 
 up to him " a pretty little blond lassie, with beautiful 
 blue eyes, swelling lips, and a full round face, a 
 neat little nose, and long golden locks," with a 
 petition in her hand in behalf of her poor brother, 
 which she presented to the great man in the most 
 graceful way. Goethe, with his usual kindness, 
 ever ready to help a fellow-mortal in distress, used 
 his influence successfully to get the brother the de- 
 sired promotion; and as an addition to this service, 
 the pretty little sister, to her own great surprise, 
 found the biggest man in Weimar next to the 
 Grand Duke, and the greatest genius in Germany, 
 had actually fallen in love with her innocent little 
 ways, and determined to make her his wife. To this 
 she had no objection ; though, perhaps, if she had 
 possessed a little more self-esteem and been of 
 higher pretensions, she might have seen good occa- 
 sion to pause ; for the poet, whether it was that he 
 wished to do the thing on the spot, beyond the 
 reach of Weimar tattle and the objections of parties 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. Ivii 
 
 who would insist on interfering where they had no 
 business/ or whether from a dislike to ecclesiastical 
 ceremonies in matrimonial matters, or because 
 being fresh from Italy and full of polytheistic 
 notions, he was not in the humour of having 
 his human passion consecrated by the customary 
 Christian rites — by whatever serious reason moved 
 or light whim, certain it is that he suddenly 
 showed himself to the polite Weimar Court and 
 Weimar world as a married man, without the 
 recognised stamp of respectability on the bond, 
 bound only by the tie of what the Germans call 
 a Gewissens Ehe, a marriage of conscience; that 
 is, he treated Christiana Vulpius as his married 
 wife from that time forward, and enjoyed all the 
 fulness of domestic happiness with her for many 
 years, which common mortals enjoy with their 
 legitimately conjugated yoke -fellows. Of course 
 after this the close connection with the Baroness 
 von Stein ceased ; Goethe might have been quite 
 willing to let her still retain the higher half of him- 
 self, to which Christiana could put forth no claims ; 
 and, had the poet been only a little more guarded 
 in his previous expressions of absolute devotion 
 to his fair confessor, there was no reason why 
 the old Platonic connection should be broken off 
 
 ^ A Gaelic proverb says: "If you wish to be blamed, 
 marry ; if you wish to be praised, die ! " 
 
Iviii ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 by a marriage in the style of common mortals, in 
 which, as the chaste wife of another, the lady could 
 have no part ; but the stroke was too sudden, and 
 the wrench too cruel — the declension also from 
 herself, a highly accomplished German Court lady, 
 to what in Scotch song is called "a bonnie lassie," 
 seemed as unworthy of the poet as it was unpleas- 
 ant to herself: and years were required to harden 
 the surface of a wound, which a passing touch, in 
 its crude freshness, would cause to bleed. But 
 this was not all : the Weimar public and the Ger- 
 man people had good reason to feel displeased 
 with the poetj not, indeed, for taking to wife, as 
 many were forward to say, a woman of inferior 
 station to himself and the Court ladies with whom 
 he habitually associated — but for the public vio- 
 lation of those external proprieties in connubial 
 ceremonial, which, as human beings are consti- 
 tuted, unquestionably have both a human value 
 and a divine right in society, and which a wise 
 man of forty years of age, well versed in the ways 
 of the world, and not in general given to despise 
 social conventions and traditional usages, should 
 not have allowed himself to defy. In this view of 
 the matter the public were undoubtedly right; 
 beyond that, whatever has been said either in 
 Germany or England with regard to this union 
 appears to me altogether unwarranted. A great 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. lix 
 
 poet, like any other man, has a right to choose a 
 wife after his own fancy ; and if he either chooses 
 the wrong woman, or marries her, as in this case, 
 in the wrong way, it is only another proof how 
 Nature has determined to keep the reins of love 
 strongly in her own hands, and to make the wisest 
 feel that once in their life at least she can make 
 them do a foolish thing.^ 
 
 ^ ' ' Goethe was not ignorant that his union with Christiana 
 had placed him in a false position to society ; as little could 
 he conceal from himself the fact that, however engaging and 
 lovable she might be in many ways, she could not offer him 
 that communion of souls which it was his nature to seek, and 
 which was no less necessary in order to surround his family 
 with those influences which could proceed only from a more 
 highly gifted mother ; but his true love to her, and his noble 
 character, prevented him from ever thinking of a divorce ; 
 on the contrary, he afterwards saw the propriety of elevating 
 her, by the ceremonial stamp of the Church, up to the plat- 
 form of matrimonial respectability required by the customs 
 of society " (DUnzer, * Leben Goethe,' p. 511); which means 
 that the union with Christiana was a mistake and a folly, 
 which the poet turned into a virtue as far as was in his 
 power. From the whole affair, those who choose may draw 
 the moral — Alles rdcht sick auf Erden. Had he married 
 Frederika, this folly and this mistake would certainly have 
 been prevented. So Schutz Wilson, in an interesting paper, 
 " The Loves of Goethe," in ' Studies and Romances ' — Lon- 
 don, 1873. Lewes, in his ' Life of Goethe,' vol. ii. ch. viii. , 
 has spoken very nobly and very justly in defence of Chris- 
 tiana. Hutton, pp. 37-91, also speaks in a very kindly way 
 about her; at the same time, however, in my opinion, con- 
 
Ix ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 IX. These remarks on the love-affairs of the 
 great German poet have been drawn out to a length 
 considerably out of proportion to the general 
 
 demning Goethe in much stronger terms than either a just 
 philosophy or a large charity seems to allow. 
 
 There is one circumstance connected with Christiana 
 Vulpius which, as it goes closely into the inmost recesses of 
 the poet's personal character, can scarcely be omitted here. 
 She is the heroine of the celebrated ' Roman Elegies, ' which 
 form the main point of offence in the moral aspect of 
 Goethe's genius as a great national poet. It was an offence 
 in Germany to many of the poet's greatest admirers, when 
 it came out ; it is an offence in England much more, though, 
 for obvious reasons, not so much spoken about as the affair of 
 Frederika. We must therefore endeavour, with all impartial- 
 ity, to make a special appraisement of it, and for this purpose 
 shall state the case fairly on both sides. First, from the point 
 of view of the general public, the case would naturally be 
 stated thus : These ' Roman Elegies ' are merely a transplan- 
 tation of the sesthetico-sensual love-poetry of the Romans into 
 modern European soil. This was both artistically a blunder 
 and morally a fault : a blunder in art, because it bears on the 
 face of it the character of an echo and an imitation j a fault in 
 morals, because to represent the noblest passion of the human 
 mind under one of its lowest aspects, must be a fault in a 
 lyric poet who breathes a lofty atmosphere, from which that 
 type can derive no nourishment. More than this, the repre- 
 sentation of love, under what is mainly a sensuous aspect, by 
 a man of influential genius, cannot be without a baleful in- 
 fluence in the field of practical morals, stimulating passions 
 which are by nature sufficiently strong, and throwing a 
 gloss of poetical sentiment over a course of sensual indul- 
 gence which philosophy and religion equally condemn. To 
 this the poet, from his point of view, would naturally reply : 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. Ixi 
 
 scheme of this paper, not so much from their in- 
 trinsic importance in the moral contents of Goethe's 
 life, as from the great amount of gossip and scandal 
 
 Nature, not convention, has always been the goddess that I 
 worship. I find in Nature the sensuous man and the spiri- 
 tual man ; and in my profession as a poet or interpreter of 
 Nature, I pay respect to both. It was always a necessity 
 with me, whatever experience I went through in life, the 
 great teacher, to represent that experience under its poetical 
 aspect ; for everything in nature has its poetical aspect, and 
 that aspect I am bound to find out and to express. Now, 
 with regard to my ' Roman Elegies,' what are the facts of 
 the case ? Italy and art had been my dream from my youth ; 
 but from the realisation of that dream I had been debarred 
 by a long service of disagreeable, and to me, as a poet, un- 
 profitable public duty in Weimar. Escaped at length from 
 these bonds, I found myself in the sunny land of natural and 
 artistic beauty, my own master at last, and free to lay myself 
 open to all the gracious influences, historical and sesthetical, 
 which flow in upon every receptive soul there. Is it a wonder 
 or a matter of regret that the genius of the three great trium- 
 virs of love, Ovid, Tibullus, and Propertius, should have 
 acted powerfully on me there ? I^ove was always the most 
 powerful instinct in my soul, and the present environment, 
 whatever it might be, was not less powerful. I count it no 
 shame to have been guilty of this sort of imitation, as we all 
 borrow from one another : when in Rome I borrowed from 
 Rome and schemed my ' Elegies,' as in Weimar I schemed my 
 ' Tasso ' from the influences of Court life which worked up- 
 on me there. But this is not all. My ' Roman Elegies, ' 
 though their scenery was furnished by Rome, were not 
 written in Rome, nor was any Roman girl the heroine of my 
 Propertian loves. The ' Elegies ' were written in Thuringia, 
 after my return from Italy ; and the heroine of the ' Elegies ' 
 
Ixii ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 that is apt to gather round such matters, and 
 from the manifest difficulty of making a true state- 
 ment of such cases without entering into personal 
 
 was my excellent wife, Christiana Vulpius, with whom I have 
 lived in domestic peace, as the happy father of a happy 
 family, for thirty years. That sweetest solace of my Weimar 
 life I met with shortly after my return from Italy. The time 
 and the woman suited ; and so I made a Roman girl of her, 
 that she might live in my memory, and go down to posterity, 
 indissolubly intertwined with the happiest days of my life, and 
 the most significant spot in the records of the human race. 
 So much might the poet say for himself in this matter, and 
 certainly not without effect ; the most important point in the 
 defence being that he did not, as Lord Byron in Venice, live 
 a life of loose sensuality in Rome, but that the love-scenes at 
 bottom are merely a glorification of his wife. We will add a 
 further plea in palliation. If it be certain, as we have good 
 reason to believe, that Goethe was not at any period of his 
 life a licentious man, and that his connection with the 
 Baroness von Stein was of a purely Platonic character, then 
 the restraint thus put upon the physical part of his nature 
 for so long a period, through the bloom of youth and the 
 vigour of manhood, avenged itself by a natural plunge into 
 the opposite, in the indulgence of a love equally human, 
 though not so elevating. All this, however, has only the 
 air of an apology ; and though, to adopt legal phraseology, 
 the strongest charges in the indictment must be departed 
 from, it seems impossible to acquit the poet altogether, either 
 of the oesthetical blunder or the moral fault. Our verdict 
 might stand thus : The double nature of man is undeniable, 
 and the complete man and the great poet must contain and 
 acknowledge both ; but the relationship which exists between 
 them is not that of equality but of subordination ; the relation 
 not of the two kings of Sparta or the two Roman consuls, but 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. Ixiii 
 
 details. Those who feel inclined to pass a severe 
 judgment on our German wise man because of his 
 extreme sensibility to female beauty, ought further 
 
 of master and man, of rider and horse — a relation so close that 
 the inferior may never be allowed to assert itself independent- 
 ly, but must be content to appear as the natural vassal of the 
 superior. No doubt in dramatic poetry the low and the high 
 elements that constitute humanity may be embodied separ- 
 ately in deficient or corrupt characters ; but the sesthetical 
 and moral effect of a drama depends on the tone, drift, and 
 upshot of the whole concatenation of characters and incidents ; 
 whereas in lyric poetry the impression is made by one person, 
 one passion, and one situation, which, if they are on a low 
 platform of sentiment and conception, stamp the whole work 
 as of a low order. Herein, if we are not mistaken, lies the 
 error of Goethe in the * Elegies ' ; he transposed the aestheti- 
 cal rights of the drama into lyrical poetry, and thereby sinned 
 against the rights of the moral nature, which in all art, as in 
 everything human, must be supremely respected. Goethe's 
 mind was essentially dramatic, or objective, as the Germans 
 call it, and no doubt beneficially so, for his lyrics, as well as 
 for dramas strictly so called ; but still in lyric poetry the 
 subjective emotion must dominate, and the dominating emo- 
 tion must be of the ennobling and elevating character which 
 belongs to all true poetry. Now what have we in the * Ro- 
 man Elegies ' ? The original of the heroine, we are assured, 
 was Goethe's wife : but she does not appear as a wife or a 
 bride, like the fair one in the Song of Solomon ; she is merely 
 a pretty Roman girl, lightly picked up in a Roman osteria, 
 and with no attractions beyond what would have made her 
 an agreeable companion of luxurious hours to an Ovid or a 
 Propertius, breathing the impure atmosphere of decadent 
 Romanism under Augustus. It may be urged in defence 
 of this style of portraying connubial bliss that Titian has 
 
Ixiv ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 to bear in mind also, that there is perhaps not one 
 among the great leaders of thought in the history 
 of the world the details of whose life lie so syste- 
 
 painted many naked beauties in the Greek style, which the 
 walls of polite saloons, and even Episcopal palaces, do not 
 disdain to receive as a fitting decoration. But the lines 
 which separate the sister domains of poetry and painting, ap- 
 pear nowhere so distinctly as in this example. Painting has 
 to do with form and colour alone, and therefore must make 
 the most of them ; poetry has the free range of human 
 thought, passion, and action, and will not be readily allowed 
 to expatiate in a field which is only the smallest part of its 
 vast domain. And here we seem to have touched a point of 
 weakness in Goethe as a poet, which comes out elsewhere, 
 specially in the second part of 'Faust.' He allows the 
 painter's brush to usurp the province of the poet's pen ; and 
 instead of a noble passion presents us with a graceful picture. 
 And thus it may appear that his assiduous practice of the 
 arts of design, while it improved his poetry in one direction, 
 damaged it in another ; so difficult is it for the most richly 
 equipped human being to divide his faculty, and to do more 
 than one great thing greatly. But a more serious charge 
 remains. The immoral influence of Titian's beauties is 
 likely null ; the finest works of art serve no higher purpose 
 with the mass of men than to entertain the eye for a passing 
 moment; but the great poet, though not a preacher, is a 
 teacher and a ti'ainer, and men look to him for guidance and 
 direction through life. Now the passion of love is one 
 which, above all others, it must be the business of a great 
 poet to elevate and to purify ; for from no passion, not even 
 the lust of drinking and gambling, do more evil issues flow 
 to society, and deeper degradation, than from this imperious 
 instinct of love, when its animal constituent is unnaturally 
 separated from the spiritual. On the face of them the ' Ro- 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. Ixv 
 
 matically bare before his critical fellow-men. Did 
 we know the private life of Sophocles, Chaucer, 
 Shakespeare, and others of our Dit fnajorum gentium 
 
 man Elegies ' deal with this nobler passion, if in an extremely 
 graceful, certainly in a rather slippeiy fashion ; and this is 
 a fault of which a great and a good man like Goethe ought 
 not to have been guilty ; a wise man also, and one who was 
 bound to consider not only the innocency of his poetical 
 portraiture, so far as himself was concerned, but the im- 
 pression which it might make on the multitudinous young 
 readers into whose hands the books of a great national poet 
 naturally fall. The apology which he made, when charged 
 with these most natural objections to his erotic compositions, 
 shows only the more strongly the great mistake he had com- 
 mitted in their composition. In a poetical epistle to an 
 esteemed friend, who had spoken to him seriously on this 
 point, he replies, in the first place, that books are of little 
 consequence in the world ; the character of young persons 
 is formed, not by anything that poets may write, but by 
 everything that a living man does. 
 
 " Es bildet 
 Nur das Leben den Manii, zmd wenig bedenten die Worfe." 
 
 And again, when his friend makes special reference to the 
 young ladies of the family — 
 
 "Die mir der kuppelnde Dichter mit allem Bosen bekannt 
 macht " — 
 
 he says that the young ladies are very nice creatures, and 
 find plenty to do in the kitchen, the laundry, the nursery, 
 the cellar, and the garden, without reading books. If they 
 have any idle time on their hands occasionally, they will 
 naturally ask for a cookery-book ; and, so far as he himself 
 is concerned, had he had a dozen daughters in his house, he 
 
Ixvi ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 in the world of books, there might be blue spots 
 there also in the marble, on which calumny would 
 eagerly fix, and scandal would delight to gloat. 
 Even the most sober pilot is not at all times equally 
 master of the helm. What remains of this pano- 
 ramic glance at a great human life admits of being 
 stated more concisely. And, in the first place, in 
 no view does the great manhood of Goethe's char- 
 acter show more effectively than in the ten years of 
 his early Weimar apprenticeship, to which we have 
 already alluded. From the high trust reposed in 
 his diligence and fidelity by the Grand Duke, he 
 soon found himself in the very difficult position of 
 being both head and hand in the various depart- 
 ments of the civil administration of the principality. 
 Goethe was not the man either to act ungratefully 
 
 would find them enough to do, without sending more than 
 once in the year to the circulating library ! This is very 
 lame, and we may add, very German and very Greek ; the 
 English young ladies certainly will never altogether forgive 
 the man who wrote thus, though no doubt they are generally 
 preserved by very wise advice, as well as by a very healthy 
 instinct, firom reading anything that might do them harm. 
 But what shall we say to the young gentlemen ? If they 
 should be found in Roman vineyards or osterias, practising 
 Propertian loves loosely (as Byron did in Venice), with the 
 * Roman Elegies ' in their pocket, would the spirit of the 
 man who wrote ' Iphigenia ' and ' Tasso,' or the author of 
 all those wise discourses in * Eckermann,' look down with 
 complacency upon that ? 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. Ixvii 
 
 to the patron who had so graciously advanced him, 
 or to perform in a perfunctory fashion any work, 
 however troublesome, that Providence threw in his 
 way. . Whatever he did, he did with all earnest- 
 ness and with all thoroughness, — and that is the 
 condition of all profitable work in this world, 
 whether inspired by genius or directed by talent. 
 The mines, the universities, the finances, the 
 Church patronage, the Court ceremonials, and, not 
 least, the management of the theatre, — all gradu- 
 ally slipt into the hands of the new untitled man 
 from shopkeeping Frankfurt ; not, of course, with- 
 out notable grudge and envy at first from the troop 
 of hereditary expectants of place and promotion 
 whom he supplanted. But in the end talent and 
 character triumphed gloriously over all these ob- 
 structions ; and not, as in the case of our Disraeli, 
 because the young literary adventurer had deter- 
 mined by imperious volition to make himself a 
 great politician, but because, without any express 
 intention of meddling with matters of administra- 
 tion, or having any special pleasure in them, the 
 poet had grandly made up his mind to adapt 
 himself to the circumstances into which he had 
 been thrown, and make the best of them. A talent 
 for business is the exception with literary men of 
 all descriptions, and particularly with poets. But, 
 though Goethe at an early period of life had secret- 
 
Ixviii ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 ly resolved to escape from the barren subtleties 
 and bloodless abstractions of the law, he had sense 
 enough to know that the root of all healthy litera- 
 ture is to be found only in a large experience of 
 life, and that a complete and well-rounded man- 
 hood, manifested in a wisely guided and prosperous 
 social career, could not be achieved by a one-sided 
 culture of the emotional and imaginative facul- 
 ties ; in other words, if his destiny, as he dimly 
 divined, was to be a great German poet, he must 
 first make himself an effective German man. This 
 was the consideration unquestionably that led him 
 to remain at Weimar, squandering, as might appear 
 to many, his brilliant talents in getting up Court 
 shows and masquerades, and ministering in other 
 shapes to the pleasures of his princely patron. It 
 may be very true that his position as a leading 
 courtier in a petty German principality was not the 
 most favourable to the growth of a robust poetical 
 talent. No doubt the atmosphere which ^schylus 
 breathed at Athens, with sword in hand, amid the 
 great Persian wars, and our Shakespeare at London, 
 in the stirring era of good Queen Bess, was much 
 more invigorating. It could not possibly be ad- 
 vantageous for a man of large calibre and compre- 
 hensive survey to live the centre of a small circle 
 of admiring worshippers. All this no man knew 
 better than the poet himself; but it was not in his 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. Ixix 
 
 power either to make a new situation for himself, 
 or to disown the duties which his position plainly 
 imposed upon him. Every man, he justly con- 
 sidered, must go through a certain routine of un- 
 congenial hard work, in order to acquire for him- 
 self a stage on which his geniality may disport 
 itself with dignity and ease ; and most of all the 
 poet, — ^'a winged animal," as Plato calls him — 
 though with his wings he soars into the fellowship 
 of the gods, — must bear in mind that he writes 
 poetry not for gods, but for men ; and that he can- 
 not hope, whether for their pleasure or their profit, 
 largely to move those from whose habitation he 
 dwells remote, and with whose pursuits he will not 
 condescend to sympathise. It is possible to spoil 
 poetry, — at least, to make it practically unprofit- 
 able to the great majority of men, — by being too 
 poetical. 
 
 X. If Goethe was an office-bearer and a courtier, 
 and finally a Prime Minister and a titled dignitary, 
 in a German principality at the time of the great 
 French wars, he could not avoid being in some 
 sense a politician ; and the part which he played, 
 or rather did not play, in the great social upheav- 
 als and overturnings symboHsed by the name of 
 the great Napoleon, has exposed him to no very 
 measured criticism on the part of the political 
 e 
 
Ixx ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 enthusiasts of the hour.^ But Goethe, like Plato, 
 was by constitution the representative of order and 
 authority ; and it was as unreasonable to blame 
 him for not sympathising with the social volcanoes, 
 earthquakes, and thunderstorms of the great revolu- 
 tionary period, as to have blamed Erasmus for not 
 being Martin Luther, or Wordsworth for not being 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley. The political type to which 
 strong characters like Goethe and Byron belong 
 is marked out from their cradle ; the one a born 
 Conservative of the stable type, the other a born 
 Liberal of the mobile type — and both belonging as 
 essentially to the divinely constituted antagonism 
 of things as the bones and the blood to the physi- 
 cal structure of the body. Give me a well-defined 
 sphere, however narrow, which I can command, 
 said Goethe, and create order out of chaos : Give 
 me liberty, said Byron, to pluck the beard of all 
 authority, and acknowledge no restraints, human 
 or divine ; and the big world is not big enough for 
 me. And as for patriotism, Goethe's patriotism 
 consisted in doing the work of administration 
 well where God had intrusted him with such 
 work ; and he believed that for the great purposes 
 of government one wise and strong man at the 
 helm of state is better than the congregated bab- 
 blement of a hundred fools. Fervid patriots at the 
 1 For this country see the Edinburgh Review for July 1857. 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. Ixxi 
 
 era of the great Liberation war never forgave him 
 for having, in what they thought a servile and 
 cowardly manner, done homage to the genius of 
 the great Napoleon ; but they forgot that the poet, 
 as a philosopher and a man of a cosmopolitan 
 mind, could not cherish in his large heart the bitter 
 animosities and the irreconcilable hatreds which 
 belong to patriotism in men of narrow sympathies, 
 and in times of feverish excitment. Goethe was no 
 partisan of Napoleon j but his habitual tone of im- 
 partial survey led him rather to admire the great 
 man than to hate the strong Frenchman. It was not 
 in his nature to hate anybody, much less whole- 
 sale to denounce a people to whom Europe owes 
 so much of its highest culture and most winning 
 grace as to the French. These Teutonic " French- 
 eaters " forgot also that Phocion, one of the most 
 virtuous of Athenian citizens, performed the same 
 part, or, to be more precise, a much more positively 
 and energetically unpatriotic part, in reference to 
 the then dominant Macedonian dynasty ; they for- 
 got, also, that Goethe was sixty years old when this 
 flaming sympathy for the restoration of the great 
 German empire of Charlemagne was expected to 
 spring, like Minerva, full-grown out of his brain. 
 If a Korner, and an Arndt, and a Stein, and 
 a Schenkendorf were required at that time to 
 pave the way for a Bismarck, who, two genera- 
 
Ixxii ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 tions afterwards, by happy blunders from with- 
 out, and drastic treatment with blood and iron 
 from within, should realise the dreams of the sol- 
 diers of the Liberation war, — the sexagenarian poet 
 Goethe could no more be expected to play the 
 part of that Arndt, or of that Stein, than Plato 
 could have been expected to play the part of De- 
 mosthenes had he drawn out his years to the brink 
 of the fatal battle of Chaeronea. Who ever blamed 
 Gioberti for not being a republican like Mazzini, 
 or Walter Scott for not being a reformer like 
 Henry Brougham? 
 
 XI. Not less wonderful, in my opinion much 
 more wonderful, than his active part in official life 
 at Weimar, was the warm interest which he there 
 took in all the sciences most closely connected 
 with the sphere of his public duty. These were 
 mineralogy, geology, botany, and anatomy ; in all 
 which he took not only an interest, such as a 
 superficial observant and sympathetic poet would 
 naturally take ; but, as in everything else, so in 
 science, he took a firm grip of whatever came near 
 him, and, as specially in the case of botany and 
 osteology, cast a prophetic glance of divination into 
 one of the inner mysteries of the framework of 
 natural science, which obtained slow but sure re- 
 cognition from the great masters in those depart- 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. Ixxiii 
 
 ments. What we admire here is not only the 
 union of scientific analysis with imaginative con- 
 struction, so rare amongst men of poetical genius, 
 but the stout purpose and systematic persistency 
 with which the poet from time to time, in the midst 
 of his poetical creations, carried on the large in- 
 ductions necessary for the verification of what he 
 had so felicitously divined. And if, in another 
 branch of natural science — viz., Optics — from an 
 ignorance or misprision of mathematics, for which 
 he had no organ, he was led into the conceit of 
 an imaginary discovery, in respect of which his 
 customary sagacity seems to have deserted him, 
 we can only say here, that non omnia possumus 
 07?mes, and the aberrations of great men are often 
 more instructive than the right lines of the small.^ 
 
 XII. A philosopher, in the professional sense of 
 the word, and in the prominent attitude of his mind, 
 like Plato in Athens, Spinoza in Holland, or Leib- 
 nitz in Hanover, Goethe was not ; but no one who 
 has either read his life or studied his ' Faust,' can 
 fail to perceive that in respect of a native genius 
 
 1 Those who are specially interested in the scientific studies 
 of the poet may consult the German work quoted in my 
 Preface, and, with regard to Optics, read an excellent dis- 
 course on Goethe's ' Farbenlehre ' by Professor Tyndall, 
 Royal Institution, March 19, 1880. 
 
Ixxiv ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 for dealing with principles, and of an actual work- 
 ing his way through metaphysical difficulties, he 
 was a philosopher, and as such a fitting represent- 
 ative of that nation in modern times which has 
 most completely reproduced the speculative subtle- 
 ty for which the ancient Greeks were so famous. 
 *' Alle philosophies^ said he, with his usual pene- 
 trating realism, " muss gelieht und gelebt werden ; " 
 and so much of it as a great poet required to live 
 and love through he had unquestionably lived and 
 loved. Let him be compared in this regard with 
 Scott, or Burns, or Byron, and we shall see how 
 distinctly, perhaps in some respects disadvan- 
 tageously for his poetry, he is a philosopher ; and 
 as characteristically as Plato represented both the 
 aesthetical and the metaphysical elements of his 
 country in being pre-eminently the poetical philo- 
 sopher, no less characteristically did the author of 
 '■ Faust ' perform the like function to his people in 
 being the philosophical poet.^ 
 
 XIII. Closely connected with philosophy, indeed 
 only another name for it in its higher departments, 
 
 1 Schiller, who evidently made a profound study of Goethe's 
 intellect, says : " Your peculiar way of alternating between 
 reflection and production is truly enviable and admirable. 
 Both species of a:ctivity are wholly distinct in you ; and this 
 is precisely the reason why both are so well developed," — 
 Briefe, 2d Jan. 1798. 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. Ixxv 
 
 is theology. In this science, as in all matters of 
 deep human concern, Goethe took through life the 
 liveliest interest. While on the one hand he had 
 enough of the sceptic in his constitution to prevent 
 him from building upon any rash dogmatism ; on 
 the other hand, the fine equipoise of his charac- 
 ter kept him quite free from the fashionable vice 
 of certain physical scientists in England at the 
 present moment, the vice of denying God alto- 
 gether, that they may escape from the suspicion 
 of being tainted with any of the vulgar errors 
 and philosophical misconceptions that in popular 
 parlance, or scholastic schematism, are identified 
 with the use of the sacred name. He believed 
 firmly in God, in a moral government of the world, 
 and in a future life. To everything else in religion, 
 whether orthodoxies or heterodoxies, he was alike 
 indifferent. He accepted the Bible in its main 
 substance and drift as God's most significant reve- 
 lation of Himself in the moral world, just as in the 
 works of Greek art he had revealed his perfections 
 in the domain of the beautiful ; but he would hear 
 nothing of that separation of God from nature, 
 which with a certain severe class of dogmatic theo- 
 logians, as with the whole school of ascetics and 
 devotees, had been paraded as the most perfect 
 form of religion. Rather with him, as with the 
 poet Coleridge and the Apostle James, true 
 
Ixxvi ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 religion consisted in the love and reverence of 
 everything good and truly beautiful, and in 
 keeping himself unspotted from the arbitrary 
 conventions, unfruitful opinions, and absurd cus- 
 toms of the world. " He prayeth best who 
 loveth best;" and he worships God most wor- 
 thily who is most eager to forward God's purpose 
 in his own sphere of work, and to strengthen 
 his fellow-labourers in theirs. Work, indeed, al- 
 ways with love and never with hatred, was his 
 grand text, rule, and shibboleth; and whoso 
 worked not thus was a dihttafite, a cumberer of 
 the ground, and the sooner he was rooted out the 
 better. For the general charge of selfishness 
 brought against him in such sweeping terms by 
 English people, I have not been able to find the 
 slightest ground. Never ready to take offence, 
 never harbouring a grudge, ever willing to help 
 where his help could be useful, in every relation 
 he was not only a great and a noticeable, but 
 a good, pleasant, brotherly, kindly, human, and 
 thoroughly enjoyable man. 
 
 XIV. One accomplishment of the poet cannot 
 be passed over in silence. He was by early and 
 special instinct a draughtsman as well as a poet ; 
 and this is the more remarkable, as very few men 
 of the highest excellence in poetry have been able 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. Ixxvii 
 
 or willing to bestow any large share of their atten- 
 tion on the sister arts of design. But the great 
 German, with his polypus-like forth - putting of 
 feelers, exercised himself in this province so assidu- 
 ously and so continuously, that it may seem doubt- 
 ful whether this close training of the eye on the 
 beauties of form and colour did not damage him 
 in the domain of eventful action and discursive 
 passion, which more peculiarly belongs to the 
 poet ; but, however this may be, it is on the other 
 hand certain that an eye well exercised in the de- 
 tails of art will never allow itself to float about in 
 that region of transcendental mistiness, overstrained 
 fancifulness, and gorgeous unreality of all kinds, 
 in which some notable poets in these latter days 
 seem to have thought it a special sign of genius 
 to indulge. 
 
 XV. Lastly, Matthew Arnold somewhere has 
 characterised Goethe as " the greatest poet of the 
 present age, and the greatest critic of all ages." 
 This dictum is perhaps very near the truth in both 
 limbs, and specially in the latter. It is not gener- 
 ally expected that a great poet should be a great 
 critic. Inspiration is apt to smother rather than 
 to foster judgment. " Contented to enjoy what 
 others understand " may well have been the true 
 expression for the intellectual attitude of a Shake- 
 
Ixxviii ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 speare, a Tasso, and a Thorwaldsen, and many of 
 the biggest names in the world of constructive art ; 
 but in certain richly compounded natures, such as 
 Plato, Scott, and Goethe, we may see plainly that 
 the faculty of just survey and catholic apprecia- 
 tion has coexisted along with exquisite sensibility 
 and fervid passion ; the prophet is master of his 
 inspiration, if not always in the moment of posses- 
 sion, certainly by a sure reaction after the fit is 
 over ; and, as in Goethe's case particularly, where 
 a man has lived an active literary life on a broad 
 European stage to the ripe age of seventy or 
 eighty, he can scarcely fail to have grown up into 
 a ripeness of sound judgment in sesthetical mat- 
 ters analogous to that finely trained instinct which 
 guides the decisions of great jurists on the bench. 
 Add to this, that the large appetite for intellectual 
 appropriation, which we noted above as one of 
 the leading characteristics of the poet's intellect, 
 accompanied him to his latest years ; and we shall 
 readily understand how no star of any magnitude, 
 whether it were a Beranger in France or a Manzoni 
 in Italy, a Byron in England or a Burns in Scotland, 
 could appear on the literary horizon of Europe 
 without receiving from the sage old Aristarchus of 
 Weimar a careful study and a loving appreciation. 
 
 XVI. It was no part of the scheme of these 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. Ixxix 
 
 remarks to give a critical appreciation of Goethe's 
 literary productions. His character and complete- 
 ness as a man personally and socially, is what I 
 have aimed at indicating in its salient features. 
 The high position which he holds as the great 
 representative literary man of Germany, though 
 not so popular with certain classes as Schiller, may 
 be assumed as certified by the general assent of 
 Europe.^ His name is as potent a court of appeal 
 
 ^ It may be worth while here to append Mr Hayward's 
 verdict, as perhaps the last well-qualified writer who has 
 spoken authoritatively on the literary reputation of the poet : — 
 
 "Although nearly half a century has elapsed since Goethe's 
 death, his reputation, constantly on the increase, stands 
 higher, and on a more solid foundation, at the present 
 moment, than at any preceding period. No dissent was 
 provoked by the lecturer who, addressing a cultivated Berlin 
 audience, recently compared his influence on the spiritual 
 atmosphere of Germany to that of a convulsion of the heart, 
 which should raise the climate many degrees in warmth, 
 eni"ich vegetation, improve the whole aspect of the land, and 
 supply a new base of life. Nor has that influence been con- 
 fined to Germany. Distinct signs of it have been recog- 
 nised in the spiritual atmosphere of England, where, besides 
 more temperate admirers, there exists a respectable school 
 who swear by him. 'The voices for Goethe,' says Mr 
 Carlyle, ' compared with those against him, are in the pro- 
 portion, as we reckon them, both as to number and value, of 
 perhaps a hundred to one. We take in, not Germany alone, 
 but France and Italy — not the Schlegels and Schellings, but 
 the Manzonis and De Staels. ' . . . Except ' Faust,' there is 
 no other work of Goethe which can be called first-rate of its 
 
Ixxx ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 in this nineteenth century as Voltaire's was in the 
 eighteenth ; and as superior to the brilHant French- 
 man in all the highest moral and intellectual quali- 
 ties, as the age and the people to which he be- 
 longed was more earnest, more positive, and more 
 reverential. One leading characteristic only of his 
 literary workmanship, intimately connected as it is 
 with his character, it may not seem inappropriate 
 to specify in conclusion. It is this : with Goethe 
 the ideal and the real were always identical, the 
 one growing by a natural necessity from the root 
 of the other, and developing itself, after the analogy 
 of the flowery world, into blossom and fruitage, by 
 a beautiful process of metamorphosis. So it was, 
 no doubt, fundamentally with Homer, and Shake- 
 speare, and Scott, and Burns, and with all first- 
 kind; but take them all together, and where shall we find a 
 richer cluster, a brighter constellation, of poetry, romance, 
 science, art, philosophy, and thought? 'Goethe,' observes 
 Madame de Stael, ' should not be criticised as an author good 
 in one kind of composition and bad in another. He rather re- 
 sembles nature, which produces all and ofvW ; and we can pre- 
 fer in him his climate of the south to his climate of the north, 
 without disregarding in him the talents which harmonise 
 with these different regions of the soul.' In whichever of 
 these regions we encounter him, we recognise a master-mind; 
 and without pretending to fix his precise place amongst the 
 greatest poets, we do not hesitate to declare him the most 
 splendid specimen of cultivated intellect ever manifested to 
 the world. " 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. Ixxxi 
 
 class poets ; but the process in Goethe's case was 
 more thoroughly worked out, or, at all events, can 
 be traced biographically with more instructive 
 minuteness. To submit himself freely and unre- 
 servedly to the action of all natural influences and 
 social facts — to lose himself, so to speak, in his 
 surroundings, and then to retire into himself and 
 carry about with him, and reproduce in suitable 
 form whatever of great or beautiful impressions 
 they had communicated — was the problem of his 
 life and the secret of his craft. Therefore his 
 poems, however light and airy in appearance, have 
 a firm root of reality in them, which makes them 
 as humanly true in their sphere as the solid and 
 flesh-like portraits of Titian and Rembrandt ; he 
 never has more wings than bones, or more sail 
 than ballast. His lyrics are never pretty soap- 
 bubbles, or little painted balloons, buoyed up 
 for the nonce with a puff of inflammable gas ; 
 they rather seem, as it has been expressed by 
 one of his most authoritative critics, " to escape 
 as unconsciously from the essence of the earth 
 and air as the scent from a violet or the music 
 from a bird.''^ When he writes, he is not doing 
 a thing to make you stare, or to make himself feel 
 as if he were out of the body for a season; he is 
 merely living out his life — he is merely achieving 
 1 Hutton, p. 56. 
 
Ixxxii ESTIMATE OF THE 
 
 the bildung or the culture which Nature meant 
 for his life-task, when she drew out his members 
 marvellously in the womb. And what is this "cul- 
 ture," which certain persons in this country have 
 hastily construed into a monstrous intellectual' 
 idolatry and sinful self-worship? ^ as if a nature so 
 
 ^ Among those who have taken up this notion — a notion, 
 in my opinion, as superficial as it is uncharitable — I am 
 sorry to name Mr Hutton, in various passages of his other- 
 wise admirable Essay. My view of the matter is, no doubt, 
 directly antagonistic to the general current of British opin- 
 ion on the subject ; but shallow, superficial opinions, espe- 
 cially when aided by natural prejudices, are as common on all 
 complex subjects as the atmosphere of Glasgow or Sheffield 
 is full of smoke ; and among English critics who think with 
 me that the more charitable view of the character of the 
 great poet on this point is the true one, I am happy to be 
 able to name Carlyle's well-known friend, John Stirling. The 
 following extract is taken from ' The Journal of Caroline 
 Fox,' ch. viii. p. 169 : " With regard to Goethe's character, 
 the more Stirling examines, the less he believes in his having 
 wilfully trifled with the feelings of women : with regard to 
 his selfishness, he holds that he did but give the fullest, 
 freest scope for the exercise of his gift ; and as we are the 
 gainers thereby, we cannot call it selfishness. When on an 
 expedition with Carlyle to Hampton Court, the great Scots- 
 man was in one of his gloomy humours and finding fault 
 with everything, which made Stirling act on the defensive 
 with equal universality. At last Carlyle shook his head and 
 pronounced, ' Woe to them that are at ease in Zion.^ At 
 which uncharitable outburst, Stirling was reminded of a 
 poem which Goethe has translated, which introduces the 
 character of a dead dog, which one after another approaches, 
 expressing disgust at the smell, the appearance, &c., of the 
 
CHARACTER OF GOETHE. Ixxxiii 
 
 keenly sympathetic and so widely social as Goethe's 
 could have dreamt of a human culture as a thing 
 possible, made up merely of intellectual dexterities 
 and artistic presentations, without the fine bond of 
 love, the sweetness of social intercourse, and the 
 expansive joy of a large dispensing faculty. By 
 bildung or culture Goethe meant nothing less than 
 that high human-godlike ideal set up for us in the 
 text of the great Teacher when he says, " Be ye 
 
 THEREFORE PERFECT, EVEN AS YOUR FATHER WHO 
 
 IS IN HEAVEN IS PERFECT;" whicli, as absolutc 
 perfection to mortal men is impossible, practically 
 means that it is every man's duty to make the 
 most of himself that he can with the faculties he 
 possesses and the circumstances in which he is 
 placed ; and whosoever does this, may retire from 
 the scene with the consoling consciousness that he 
 has led a perfect human life, in a spiritual sense, 
 and it may be also a prosperous life, as the world 
 is accustomed to estimate prosperity. Goethe did 
 both ; and with the exception of the human fail- 
 ings here and there, which I have not been anxious 
 to cloak, he may well deserve to be studied by 
 our generation, and to be handed down to long 
 generations as the model of a perfectly wise and 
 virtuous man. 
 
 poor animal. At last Christ passes, looks on it, and says, 
 ' What beautiful white teeth it has ! ' " 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS 
 
 (Srau, t^eurer frtunh, ist alU ^^eoric; 
 ^oti^ gran ir«s I'tbens golbntr ^aum. 
 
THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 
 
 The Problem of Life. 
 
 Man's highest virtue always is as much as possible 
 to rule external circumstances, and as little as possible 
 to let himself be ruled by them. Life lies before 
 us, as a huge quarry before the architect : he de- 
 serves not the name of architect except, out of this 
 fortuitous mass, he can combine, with the greatest 
 economy, suitableness^ and durability, some form, the 
 pattern of which originated in his own soul. All 
 things without us, — nay, I may add, all things within 
 us, — are mere elements ; but deep in the inmost shrine 
 of our nature lies the creative force, which out of 
 these can produce what they were meant to be, and 
 which leaves us neither sleep nor rest, till in one way 
 or another, without us or within us, this product has 
 taken shape. 
 
4 'J .'r'TJ^E \WJ,Si)dM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Doubt. 
 Doubt of any kind can be removed by nothing but 
 action. 
 
 Action. 
 
 To be active is the primary vocation of man. All 
 the intervals in which he is obliged to rest, he should 
 employ in gaining clearer knowledge of external 
 things, for this will in its turn facilitate action. 
 
 Deliberation. 
 
 Long considerations are commonly a proof that 
 we have not the point to be determined clearly in 
 our eye ; precipitate proceedings, that we do not 
 know it. 
 
 Clea7'7iess and Decision. 
 
 I reverence the individual who understands dis- 
 tinctly what he wishes; who unweariedly advances, 
 who knows the means conducive to his object, and 
 can seize and use them. How far his object may be 
 great or little, may merit praise or censure, is a 
 secondary consideration with me. A great part of 
 all the misery and mischief that we find in the world 
 arises from the fact that men are too remiss to get a 
 proper knowledge of their object in life, and, when 
 they do know it, to work intensely, in attaining it. 
 They seem to me like people who have taken up a 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 5 
 
 notion, that they must and will erect a tower, and 
 who yet expend on the foundation no more material 
 and labour than would be sufficient for a hut. 
 
 Retrospection. 
 
 Everything that happens to us leaves some trace 
 behind ; everything contributes imperceptibly to make 
 us what we are. Yet it is often dangerous to take a 
 strict account of it. For either we grow proud and 
 negligent, or downcast and dispirited ; and both are 
 equally injurious in their consequences. The surest 
 plan is just to do the nearest task that lies before us. 
 
 Earnestness. 
 
 Without earnestness there is nothing to be done 
 in life; yet even among the people whom we call 
 men of culture, but little earnestness is often to be 
 found : in labours and employments, in arts, nay, 
 even in recreations, they plant themselves, if I may 
 say so, in an attitude of self-defence ; they live, as 
 they read a heap of newspapers, only to be done 
 with them ; they remind one of that young English- 
 man at Rome, who told, with a contented air, one 
 evening in some company, that " to-day he had de- 
 spatched six churches and two galleries." They 
 wish to know and learn a multitude of things, and 
 not seldom exactly those things with which they have 
 the least concern ; and they never see that hunger is 
 
6 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 not appeased by snapping at the air. When I become 
 acquainted with a man my first inquiry is : With 
 what does he occupy himself, and how, and with 
 what degree of perseverance? The answer regu- 
 lates the interest which I take in that man for life. 
 
 Madness. 
 
 Nothing more exposes us to Madness than distin- 
 guishing ourselves from others, and nothing more 
 contributes to maintain our common-sense than liv- 
 ing in the common way with multitudes of men. 
 
 For man there is but one great misfortune, when 
 some idea lays hold of him, which exerts no influ- 
 ence upon active life, or still more, which withdraws 
 him from it. 
 
 The Popular Estimate. 
 
 The world has a particular way of acting towards 
 public persons of acknowledged merit ; it gradually 
 begins to be indifferent to them, and to favour talents 
 which are new, though far inferior ; it makes exces- 
 sive requisitions on the former, and accepts of any- 
 thing with approbation from the latter. 
 
 Self-knowledge. 
 
 How can a man learn to know himself? By reflec- 
 tion never, only by action. In the measure in which 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 7 
 
 thou seekest to do thy duty shalt thou know what 
 is in thee. But what is thy duty? the demand of 
 the hour. 
 
 What to Hope for in Life. 
 
 Capable, active man, be worthy of thyself and 
 expect : 
 
 From the great, .... Grace. 
 
 From the powerful, . . . Favour. 
 
 From the active and the good, . Help. 
 
 From the many, .... Liking. 
 
 From individuals, . . . Love. 
 
 Aim of Life. 
 
 Every man must think for himself, and he will 
 always find upon his path some truth, or at least a 
 kind of truth, that will help him through life ; yet he 
 dare not allow himself to drift ; he must be self-con- 
 trolled — mere naked instinct does not befit a man. 
 
 Circumstances and Character. 
 
 A man is not little when he finds it difficult to cope 
 with circumstances, but when circumstances over- 
 master him. 
 
 Moderation. 
 Unlimited activity, of whatever kind, must end in 
 bankruptcy. 
 
8 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Abstract ideas and great conceit are ever on the 
 road to produce terrible catastroplies. 
 
 The Present. 
 
 It is difficult to do justice to the present. Com- 
 monplace characters in the present cause us ennui; 
 the good give us not a little to bear ; and the bad 
 we must often drag along with us, whether we will 
 or not. 
 
 The Mission of Life. 
 
 Every extraordinary man has a certain mission 
 which he is called upon to accomplish. If he has ful- 
 filled it, he is no longer needed upon earth in the same 
 form, and Providence uses him for some other pur- 
 pose. Thus it was with Napoleon and many others. 
 Mozart died in his six-and-thirtieth year ; Raphael 
 at the same age ; Byron only a little older. But all 
 these had perfectly fulfilled their mission, and it was 
 time for them to depart, that other people might still 
 have something to do in a world made to last a long 
 while. 
 
 Riches. 
 
 Every one that can administer what he possesses 
 has enough; and to be wealthy is a burdensome 
 affair, unless you have it wisely under your fingers. 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 9 
 
 The Well-bred Man, 
 
 A well - bred carriage is difficult to imitate ; for 
 in strictness it is negative, and it implies a long- 
 continued previous training. You are not required 
 to exhibit in your manner anything that betokens 
 dignity; for by this means you are like to run into 
 formality and haughtiness : you are rather to avoid 
 whatever is undignified and vulgar. You are never 
 to forget yourself; are to keep a constant watch 
 upon yourself and others ; to forgive nothing that 
 is faulty in your own conduct, in that of others 
 neither to forgive too little nor too much. Noth- 
 ing must appear to touch you, nothing to agitate : 
 you must never overhurry yourself, must ever keep 
 yourself composed, retaining still an outward calm- 
 ness, whatever storms may rage within. The noble 
 character at certain moments may resign himself to 
 his emotions ; the well-bred man never. The latter is 
 like a man dressed in fair and spotless clothes : he 
 will not lean on anything ; every person will beware 
 of rubbing on him. He distinguishes himself from 
 others, yet he may not stand apart. The well-bred 
 man of rank, in spite of every separation, always 
 seems united with the people round him ; he is 
 never to be stiff or uncomplying; he is always to 
 appear the first, and never to insist on so appearing. 
 
 It is clear then that to seem well - bred, a man 
 must actually be so. It is also clear why women are 
 
lo THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 generally more expert at taking up the air of breed- 
 ing than the other sex ; why courtiers and soldiers 
 catch it more easily than other men. 
 
 Social Intercourse. Faults and Follies. 
 
 The passion for looking into the future is so com- 
 mon because we have a pleasure in turning the acci- 
 dental element of which it is full, by help of quiet 
 wishes and guesses, into something that tells in our 
 favour. 
 
 People may live as much retired from the world as 
 they please, but sooner or later before they are aware 
 they will find themselves debtor or creditor to some- 
 body. 
 
 To communicate our feelings and sentiments is 
 natural ; to take up what is communicated just as it is 
 communicated is culture. 
 
 No man would talk much in society, if he were 
 fully conscious how often he misunderstands other 
 people. 
 
 When we repeat what we have heard in conver- 
 sation, we do it with some change which generally 
 proceeds from some misunderstanding. 
 
 He who takes a prominent part in conversation in 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. ii 
 
 company without to a certain extent flattering the 
 hearers, excites ill-will or displeasure. 
 
 Every word uttered in conversation naturally 
 brings out its contrary. 
 
 Contradiction and gross flattery equally destroy 
 good conversation. That society is the most pleasant 
 in which the persons composing it habitually display 
 a cheerful respect for one another. 
 
 There is nothing by which men display their char- 
 acter so much as in what they consider ridiculous. 
 
 To the man of superficial cleverness almost every- 
 thing readily takes a ridiculous aspect ; to the man of 
 thought almost nothing is really ridiculous. 
 
 An old gentleman was blamed for continuing to 
 pay attention to young ladies. " It is the only means 
 I have," he replied, " to keep myself young, and every 
 one is ready to do that." 
 
 People will allow their faults to be spread out be- 
 fore them, nay, will suffer various castigations on 
 their account ; but when they are called upon to 
 give them up, then they become impatient. 
 
 Certain faults are necessary for the existence of the 
 
12 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 individual. It would, for instance, be disagreeable 
 for us if our old friends gave up certain peculiarities 
 which may be gross faults. 
 
 People say he will die soon, when they see a man 
 doing something contrary to his usual habits. 
 
 What sort of faults may we retain, nay, even cher- 
 ish in ourselves? Those faults which are rather 
 pleasant than offensive to others. 
 
 Passions are defects or virtues in the highest 
 power. 
 
 Our passions are at once elevated and softened by 
 confession. In nothing perhaps is the golden mean 
 so desirable as in the practice of confidence and ret- 
 icence towards those whom we love. 
 
 Life. 
 
 He is already dead who lives only to keep himself 
 alive. 
 
 Present and Future. 
 
 Do I live for no other purpose than to think about 
 
 living? Am I to deny myself the enjoyment of the 
 
 present moment, in order to make myself certain of 
 
 the following moment, and when it comes, to be 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 13 
 
 cheated out of its fair promise with all sorts of whims 
 and worries? 
 
 Society and Conversation. 
 
 In SOCIETY every man is taken for what he gives 
 himself out to be ; but he must give himself out for 
 something. Better to be slightly disagreeable than 
 altogether insignificant. 
 
 We can never learn what sort of persons people are, 
 when they come to us ; we must go to them, if we 
 would know what stuff they are made of, and how 
 they manage or mismanage their surroundings. 
 
 I find it quite natural that when people present 
 themselves to us in the position of visitors, we 
 should have many things to object to them, that, as 
 soon as they leave us, we should come out with some 
 not very charitable remarks; for we have in those 
 circumstances a sort of right to measure them by the 
 value we put upon ourselves. Even sensible and 
 moderate persons find difficulty on such occasions in 
 abstaining from unkindly comments. If, on the other 
 hand, we live for some days with other people, and 
 observe how they comport themselves in a well-ordered 
 establishment, only stupidity or malice could delight 
 to find faults, where so much worthy of admiration is 
 presented. 
 
14 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 The company of chaste women is the proper atmo- 
 sphere of good manners. 
 
 A MILITARY MAN, when he is a person of intelli- 
 gence and knowledge, has advantages, both in life 
 and society, superior to what most other men enjoy. 
 Even a rough and uncultured soldier may present 
 himself as he is, without giving the same offence that 
 an equal amount of roughness in a person of a less 
 favoured profession would cause ; and besides, in 
 the character of soldiers, there is generally, behind 
 the outward display of rude strength, a substratum of 
 good-humour, which gives a pleasant seasoning to 
 \ht\r gaucheries. On the other hand, a rude civilian 
 is of all men the most disagreeable; for the func- 
 tion which he has to perform in society is of a 
 nature that naturally should cultivate a certain deli- 
 cate tact, the farthest removed from anything like 
 coarseness. 
 
 No man with spectacles on nose would enter into 
 a familiar conversation with a lady, if he knew that 
 women lose all inclination to speak confidentially 
 with a man, when they have to encounter a pair of 
 glass lenses instead of a living eye. 
 
 There is no external expression of politeness 
 which has not a root in the moral nature of man. 
 Forms of politeness, therefore, should never be in- 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 15 
 
 culcated on young persons without letting them 
 understand the moral ground on which all such 
 forms rest. 
 
 A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows 
 his likeness to the intelligent observer. 
 
 There is a politeness of the heart ; this is closely 
 allied to love. Those who possess this purest foun- 
 tain of natural politeness find it easy to express the 
 same in forms of outward propriety. 
 
 To preserve our place and our peace of mind with 
 pleasure in the face of the decided superiority of 
 another, our competitor in the same sphere of action, 
 there is only one charm, and that is love. 
 
 No man, they say, is a hero to his valet dechambre. 
 But the reason of this is that a hero can be recog- 
 nised only by a hero. And in this way, no doubt, 
 the valet will have no difficulty in estimating the high 
 and low as they are manifested in the person of other 
 valets. 
 
 There is no greater consolation for a certain class 
 of commonplace people than that men of overtopping 
 genius are not immortal. 
 
 Men even of the greatest genius acknowledge the 
 
1 6 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 influence of the age to which they belong by a certain 
 characteristic weakness. 
 
 Men, for the most part, are looked upon as more 
 dangerous than they are. 
 
 Fools and sensible men are equally innocuous. 
 It is in the half fools and the half wise that the 
 great danger lies. 
 
 Critical Moments. 
 
 At certain epochs of our life we find ourselves in 
 circumstances, that, while they press upon us, and 
 even seem altogether to weigh us down, at the same 
 time give us the opportunity, nay, impose on us the 
 DUTY, to elevate ourselves, and by so doing fulfil the 
 purpose of the Divine Being in our creation ; for in 
 behaving manfully under such circumstances, we are 
 forced on the one hand to assert to the full all the 
 effective force that is in us, and on the other hand to 
 deny ourselves persistently, in so far as this may be 
 necessary for the maintenance of our position. 
 
 Self-control. 
 
 From time to time I meet a young man in whom 
 I can see nothing to object to ; only I feel anxious 
 when I observe such a finely equipped fellow ready 
 to swim with the stream ; and here I am always 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 17 
 
 forced to make the remark that the rudder is given 
 into the hand of man in his frail skiff, not that he 
 may be at the mercy of the waves, but that he may 
 follow the dictates of a will directed by intelligence. 
 
 Love. 
 
 Hatred and ill-will confine the spectator to the 
 mere surface of what he sees, let him be ever so 
 acute ; but when great perspicacity is associated with 
 kindliness and love, the observer may pierce beyond 
 the mere shell of men and of the world, and under 
 happy influences may hope to solve the highest 
 problems. 
 
 Means and End. 
 
 Men get out of their reckoning, both in respect of 
 themselves and others, by treating the mere means as 
 an end; and under this delusion out of sheer activity 
 springs mere barrenness, or it may be something 
 altogether monstrous. 
 
 Truth. 
 
 Men sometimes seem vexed that, after all, truth is 
 so very simple an affair ; they ought to bear in mind 
 that, simple as it is, they have generally trouble 
 enough before they can apply it to any practical 
 purpose. 
 
1 8 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Old Age. 
 
 We must not take the faults of our youth into our 
 old age ; for old age brings with it its own defects. 
 
 Character. 
 
 We have much need of a man like Lessing ; for 
 how did this man support himself so high in the re- 
 putation of his countrymen? By his character and 
 his consistency alone. There are many men as long- 
 headed and as cultivated as he ; but where will you 
 find such a character.'* 
 
 Reverence. 
 
 Many men have plenty of cleverness, and plenty 
 of knowledge, but they are at the same time full of 
 vanity; and, in order to obtain from the shallow 
 multitude the reputation of a bel esprit, they fling 
 aside all shame and all reverence, and nothing is 
 holy before their reckless wit. 
 
 Madame de Genlis was therefore quite right to pro- 
 test against the unbridled licentiousness of Voltaire. 
 For at bottom, however clever his profane witticisms 
 may be, they do no good to the world, — they form a 
 foundation for nothing ; nay, they may even do much 
 harm by confusing those who are weak in the faith, 
 and taking from under them their only stay. 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS, 19 
 
 And then, what truly do we know, — and how little 
 can we attain to with all our wit? 
 
 Now. 
 
 " I feel myself," said Eckermann, "gradually leav- 
 ing my ideal and theoretic tendencies, and more and 
 more able to appreciate the value of the present 
 moment." 
 
 ''Only persist in this," said Goethe, "and hold 
 FAST BY THE PRESENT. Every situation — nay, every 
 moment — is of infinite value, for it is the representa- 
 tive of a whole eternity." 
 
 Knowledge of Men. 
 
 What would be the use of culture, if we did not 
 try to control our natural tendencies.? It is a great 
 folly to hope that other men will harmonise with us ; 
 I have never hoped this. I have always regarded 
 each man as an independent individual, whom I en- 
 deavoured to study, and to understand with all his 
 peculiarities, but from whom I had a right to demand 
 no further sympathy. In this way I have been en- 
 abled to converse with every man ; and thus alone is 
 produced the knowledge of various characters, and 
 the dexterity necessary for the conduct of life. For 
 it is in a conflict with natures opposed to his own 
 that a man must collect his strength to fight his way 
 through life; and thus all our different sides are 
 
20 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 brought out and developed, so that we soon feel 
 ourselves a match for every foe. 
 
 Self-importance. 
 
 We cannot too soon convince ourselves how very 
 easily we may be dispensed with in the world. What 
 important personages we conceive ourselves to be ! 
 We think that it is we alone who animate the circle 
 in which we move ; that in our absence, life, nourish- 
 ment, and breath will make a general pause ; and, 
 alas ! the void which occurs is scarce remarked, so 
 quickly is it filled up again ; and it is well for 
 even our dearest friends when they soon recover 
 their composure ; when they say each to himself, 
 there where thou art, there where thou remainest, 
 accomplish what thou canst ; be busy, be courteous, 
 and let the present scene delight thee. 
 
 Children. 
 
 In speaking of a child, we have pleasure not only 
 from what we see, but even more from what we hope 
 for. 
 
 Happiness. 
 
 Who is the happiest person.? — he whose nature 
 asks for nothing that the world does not wish and 
 use. 
 
 Misfortune. . . i ; 
 
 Misfortune, when we look upon it with our eye, is 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 21 
 
 smaller than when our imagination entertains the 
 evil, and gives it a lodgment in the inner chamber 
 of the soul. 
 
 Judgment of Persons. 
 
 We never should inspect the conduct of men, un- 
 less we at the same time take an interest in improv- 
 ing it ; and it is through action only that we can ever 
 be in a condition to inspect and watch ourselves. 
 
 Character. 
 
 The formation of his character is not, as it ought 
 to be, the chief concern with every man. Many wish 
 merely to find a sort of recipe for comfort, directions 
 for acquiring riches, or whatever good they aim at. 
 
 Slow Growth. 
 
 He in whom there is much to develop will be later 
 in acquiring true perceptions of himself and of the 
 world. There are few who possess at once thought 
 and the capacity of action. Thought expands but 
 slackens ; action animates but confines. 
 
 Talent. 
 
 We should guard against a talent which we cannot 
 hope to practise in perfection. Improve it as we may, 
 we shall always in the end, when the merit of the 
 
32 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 great masters has become apparent to us, painfully 
 lament the loss of time and strength devoted to it. 
 
 Otir Principles. 
 
 What we call our principles are often just a supple- 
 ment to our peculiar manner of existence. We de- 
 light to clothe our errors in the garb of universal laws ; 
 to attribute them to irresistibly appointed causes. 
 
 Guidance. 
 
 It is inconceivable how much a man of true culture 
 can accomplish for himself and others, if, without 
 attempting to rule, he is in a position to be the 
 guardian over many ; can induce them to do that in 
 season, which they are at any rate disposed enough 
 to do; can guide them to their objects, which in 
 general they see with due distinctness, though they 
 miss the road to them. Let us make a league for 
 this; it is no empty enthusiasm, but an idea which 
 may be fully carried out — is often carried out indeed, 
 oiily with imperfect consciousness, by people of benev- 
 olence and worth. 
 
 Popularity. 
 
 The world sees only the reflection of merit. There- 
 fore when you come to know a really great man 
 intimately, you may as often find him above, as 
 below, his reputation. 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 23 
 
 Self-estimate. 
 
 It is right that a man, when he first enters on life, 
 should think highly of himself, should determine to 
 attain many eminent distinctions, and endeavour to 
 make all things possible ; but, when his education has 
 advanced to a certain point, it is advantageous for 
 him that he learn to lose himself among a mass of 
 men — that he learn, for the sake of others, to forget 
 himself in an activity prescribed by duty. It is then 
 that he tirst becomes acquainted with himself; for 
 it is conduct alone that compares us with others. 
 
 The Work of Life. 
 
 Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, oppor- 
 tunity fleeting. To act is easy ; to think is hard ; to 
 act according to our thinking is troublesome. Every 
 beginning is cheerful ; the threshold is the place of 
 expectation. The boy stands astonished ; his im- 
 pressions guide him; he learns sportfully; serious- 
 ness comes on him by surprise. 
 
 Words and Deeds. 
 
 Words are good ; but they are not the best. The 
 best is not to be explained by words. The spirit in 
 which we act is the great matter. Action can be 
 understood, and again represented by the spirit alone. 
 No man knows what he is doing, while he acts rightly; 
 but of what is wrong we are always conscious. 
 
24 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Judge not. 
 
 How can men judge rightly of our actions, appear- 
 ing as they do but singly, or in fragments to them ? 
 actions of which they see the smallest part ; while 
 good and bad take place in secret, and, for the most 
 part, nothing comes to light but an indifferent show. 
 
 Self-knowledge. 
 
 There are persons quite unstable and incapable of 
 all improvement, who frequently accuse themselves 
 in the bitterest manner, confessing and deploring 
 their faults with extreme ingenuousness, though 
 they possess not the smallest power within them to 
 retire from the course along which the irresistible 
 tendency of their nature is dragging them. 
 
 Explanations. 
 
 I hate all explanations ; they who make them de- 
 ceive either themselves or the other party — generally 
 both. 
 
 Co-operation. 
 
 Honest, clear, and unselfish co-operation tor the 
 realisation of the good and true, that lies between two 
 extremes, is seldom to be met with. What we do 
 meet with is obstinate adherence to an obsolete and 
 soulless tradition on the one hand, and a rash lust 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 25 
 
 for change on the other ; retardation without reason, 
 and haste without safety. 
 
 Self-praise. 
 
 " Self-praise hath a bad smell." Very true ; but 
 what sort of a smell dispraise and misrepresentation 
 of others may have, on this point the public nose 
 says nothing. 
 
 Love, 
 
 It is said that like loves like ; but it is said also that 
 love goes by contraries. Both sayings are true. There 
 is a class of men who are attracted only by those who 
 are like themselves ; and another class who are power- 
 fully drawn towards that which is most opposite to 
 themselves. 
 
 Self-contradiction. 
 
 An antagonism within ourselves — a sort of self- 
 contradiction, — is often not to be avoided. We must 
 face it, and endeavour to adjust the opposing claims 
 how best we may. On the other hand, contradiction 
 from other parties, had, on the general case, better be 
 let alone. Their negative attitude is their business, 
 not ours. 
 
 Ignorance, 
 
 Nothing is more terrible than ignorance with 
 spurs on. 
 
26 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Corruptiojt of Human Nature. 
 
 Every man bears something within him that, if it 
 were publicly pronounced, would excite a feeling of 
 aversion. 
 
 Man. 
 
 Man would not be the aristocratic creature that he 
 is in the world, were he not too aristocratic for it. 
 
 Judgment. 
 
 A man whose clear intellect can form a perfectly 
 correct decision about the matter before him, may err 
 greatly by enunciating such particular decision with 
 a kind of universal application ; whereas, in truth, the 
 judgments of the understanding are properly of force 
 but once, and that in the special case, and become 
 inaccurate in some degree when applied to any other 
 case. 
 
 Old Age. 
 
 Old age must rest content with being deprived of 
 one of the greatest of all human rights, the right of 
 being judged by our equals. 
 
 Self-limitatio7i. 
 
 The smallest man may be complete, if he confine 
 his activity within the natural range of his capacities 
 and dexterities; but even superior talents will be 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. zj 
 
 obscured, defeated, and destroyed, if this indispens- 
 able instinct of self-limitation is wanting. Mistakes 
 arising from this defect will come more and more 
 to the front in modern time^ ; for who shall be able 
 to satisfy the demands of an age, living under the 
 stimulus of a constant high pressure, and the excite- 
 ment of a hot-spurred progression ? 
 
 Conscience and Action. 
 
 The man of action has no conscience in the moment 
 of action ; only the observer passes a severe judgment. 
 
 Morality of the World. 
 
 The moral sentiment of what is called the world, is 
 made up in great measure of ill-will and envy. 
 
 Rule of Life. 
 
 Wouldst thou be a happy liver, 
 
 Let the past be past for ever I 
 
 Fret not, when prigs and pedants bore you ; 
 
 Enjoy the good that's set before you ; 
 
 But chiefly hate no man ; the rest 
 
 Leave thou to God, who knows what's best. 
 
 Life the School of Manhood. 
 
 A noble man may to a narrow sphere 
 Not owe his training. In his country he 
 And in the world must learn to be at home, 
 
28 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 And bear both praise and blame, and by long proof 
 
 Of contest and collision nicely know 
 
 Himself and others, — not in solitude. 
 
 Cradling his soul in dreams of fair conceit. 
 
 A foe will not, a true friend dare not, spare him ; 
 
 And thus in strife of well-tried powers he grows, 
 
 Feels what he is, and feels himself a man. 
 
 The World, and how to Use it. 
 
 Live with the world whoso has ntrve 
 To make the world his purpose serve ; 
 But, if you leave your lofty level 
 To do the world's vile command. 
 You were as well to let the devil 
 Keep all your gear in hand. 
 
 The Wisdom of Life. 
 Use well the moment ; what the hour 
 Brings for thy use is in thy power ; 
 And what thou best canst understand. 
 Is just the thing lies nearest to thy hand. 
 
 Home. 
 He is the happiest man, be he the king, 
 Or be the meanest subject, whoso knows 
 The comfort of a home administered 
 By wisely practised hands. 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 29 
 
 Pride and Insolence. 
 
 The race of men is far too weak to stand 
 Upon a proud uncustomed height, and feel 
 No giddiness. 
 
 Variety and Perfection. 
 
 Like be none to another, but like be each to the 
 
 highest : 
 How to do that? — let each in his own sphere be 
 
 complete. 
 
 Little and Big. 
 
 Art thou little, do that little well, and for thy comfort 
 
 know. 
 The biggest man can do his biggest work no better 
 
 than just so. 
 
 Self- know I edge. 
 
 Know myself? — what profit could that bring? 
 
 I'd shudder at myself and flap my wing, 
 And fly ten leagues away from such a hateful thing. 
 
 What the World wants with you. 
 
 Don't quarrel with mankind. 
 
 That they are blind 
 To scrolls of merit blazoned on your banners. 
 
ao THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 They want nor thought nor sentiment, 
 
 Well content 
 With pleasant words and polished manners. 
 
 Secrecy. 
 
 Your purpose told to others is your own 
 No longer ; with your will once set at large 
 Blind accident will sport. Who would command 
 Mankind, must hold them fast by swift surprise; 
 Nay more, — even with the strongest will he fails 
 To do great things, crossed by a thousand wills 
 With petty contradiction. 
 
 Love — Liking and Disliking. 
 
 What mystery doth the magnet move.'' 
 As great, no greater than my hate or love. 
 
 Find one quite like yourself, and you 
 Will run, abhorrent, from the view. 
 
 Lads dance with lasses — why? 'tis just because 
 Not like to like, but like to unlike draws. 
 
 The Whole or a Part? 
 
 To live a whole in thine own self is life's most lofty 
 
 style, 
 But if thy wing mounts not so high, thou art not 
 
 therefore vile ; 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 31 
 
 Go join thee to some noble whole, and be a part of 
 
 him, 
 Content, who cannot be the head, to be a useful limb. 
 
 Hatred and Envy. 
 
 Envy's the foil to fair prosperity ; 
 
 And hatred teaches us, when foes abound. 
 
 To keep our armour on. 
 
 Self-dependence. 
 
 Thy tented welkin, Jove, enshroud 
 
 With vapoury cloud. 
 
 And, like a boy, with lusty strokes. 
 
 Who crops the thistle's crown, 
 
 O'er mountain-peaks and aged oaks, 
 
 Come blustering" down ; 
 
 Yet must thou yield 
 
 To me my earth, 
 
 My hut which mine own hands did build. 
 
 And mine own hearth, 
 
 Whose blazing glee 
 
 Thou enviest me. 
 
 Nothing more vile the sun below. 
 Than your host of gods I know ! 
 Ye nourish in most sorry guise, 
 With tribute base of sacrifice. 
 
32 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 And breath of prayer, 
 
 Your majesty ; 
 
 And would starve sheer, 
 
 Were there not here. 
 
 Children and beggars, a servile crew, 
 
 Hopeful fools to flatter you. 
 
 When I was a little boy, 
 
 And laughed and wept, I knew not why. 
 
 Up to the sun and to the sky, 
 
 Wistful I cast my wandering eye, 
 
 As if above there were an ear. 
 
 My plaint to hear ; 
 
 A heart like mine in yonder pole, 
 
 To bind the wounds o' the anguished soul. 
 
 Received I then aught aid from you. 
 
 Against the haughty Titan crew ? 
 
 Who then from death did set me free, 
 
 And slavery .f* 
 
 Thyself achieved it with thy inborn art, 
 
 Thou holy, glowing heart ! 
 
 But, young and artless, thou didst pour 
 
 Thy gushing thanks (fond fool !) before 
 
 The sleeper there above. 
 
 I reverence thee ! for what ? 
 Hast thou ever in mercy known 
 To soothe the laden spirit's groan } 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 33 
 
 Thou ever stilled the tears that start, 
 When doubts perplex the heart ? 
 Hath not, to the full-grown man, 
 Forged me Time's all-mighty plan, 
 And eternal Destiny, 
 Lord both of thee and me. 
 
 Deem'dst thou, belike, that I should hate my life, 
 
 And into deserts flee. 
 
 Because I could not see, 
 
 All blossoms of my dreamings rife ? 
 
 Here sit I, and with life inspire 
 
 A race that shall be like their sire ; 
 
 Who shall know beneath the skies, 
 
 To suffer, and to weep, 
 
 To enjoy, and to rejoice, 
 
 And thee and thine even so despise, 
 
 As I do ! 
 
 Curiosity. 
 
 Far from me be the lust to blame with rash condem- 
 nation, 
 
 Harmless instincts implanted by Nature, the bountiful 
 mother ; 
 
 For what Reason would grope for in vain, spontaneous 
 impulse 
 
 Ofttimes achieves at a stroke with light and pleasure- 
 ful guidance. 
 
 c 
 
34 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Tell me this— if the eye with curious greed did not 
 
 wander 
 Hither and thither to see, how then we could reach 
 
 in our knowledge 
 All the wonders outspread in the beautiful world 
 
 before us? 
 First we seek for the new with eager delight, and the 
 
 useful 
 Then with assiduous toil,— and then the good, which 
 
 alone can 
 Raise to his level the man, and add to his worth in 
 
 the raising. 
 Nature gave to the young a careless light disposition, 
 Witless of danger, and wise to brush the witness of 
 
 sorrow 
 Swift from the eye, till it passes away like showers 
 
 in the spring-time. 
 Him not less we admire the full-grown man, whom 
 
 it likes not 
 Careless to live for the hour, but who firmly, with 
 
 sober conviction, 
 Works through rough and through smooth with proud 
 
 persistent exertion ; 
 He produces the good, and he compensates the evil. 
 
 Consistency and Firmness. 
 He who in slippery times unstable lives and unsteady, 
 Maketh the bad to be worse, and spreads the con- 
 tagion around him ; 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 35 
 
 But with firmness of will who stands, and holds to 
 
 his purpose, 
 Maketh the world his clay, and shapes all men to his 
 
 Death. 
 
 The piteous image of Death stands 
 
 Not to the wise as a terror, and not as the end to the 
 pious. 
 
 Wisely the wise man is driven from thought of death 
 into action ; 
 
 Wisely the pious from death draws hope of bliss for 
 the future. 
 
 Each is wise in his way ; and death to life is trans- 
 muted 
 
 Wisely by both. 
 
 Work. 
 
 Shoot your own thread right through the earthly 
 
 tissue, 
 Bravely : and leave the gods to find the issue. 
 
 Receptiveness and Projectiveness. 
 
 Wouldst thou live well in the land, 
 Take two wallets in thy hand. 
 This to gather what you find, 
 That to give with willing mind ; 
 
36 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Just as princes when they travel, 
 With heavy hand lay on the charges, 
 And then from overflowing founts 
 Of Royal bounty make a largess ! 
 
 Love of Fame. 
 
 For living men to live for fame. 
 
 Is to nurse fret, and hunt for blame ; 
 
 And for your posthumous reputation. 
 
 When you have joined the ghostly nation, 
 
 Trust me, when Fame beneath the sod, 
 
 Has slept one hundred years, 'tis odd. 
 
 If one man in a million knows 
 
 How you disturbed the world's repose. 
 
 Pride and Ignorance. 
 
 Who rides so fast? Dame Ignorance 
 And Lady Pride. Well, never mind them ; 
 They'll find some day, as they advance. 
 Shame and Reproach close tacked behind them ! 
 
 Rtile of Life. 
 
 Like the star 
 That shines afar. 
 Without haste 
 And without rest, 
 Let each man wheel with steady sway. 
 
 Round the task that rules the day, 
 And do his best ! 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 37 
 
 If' 
 " This young man I might like," quoth the dainty 
 
 maiden : " that other, 
 Noble and good though he be, hits not my fancy at 
 
 all: 
 But this third I would take to my heart, if I only 
 
 could get him ; 
 Ify O sorrowful if! all the best things have an 7/!" 
 
 Repentance. 
 
 If it be noble in our hearts to keep 
 The memory of our faults, and weigh them well. 
 And in their room plant virtues, nevermore 
 Can it be right and praiseful, with long ffet 
 For past misdeeds to undermine the heart, 
 And lame the springs of action ! 
 
 Self-love. 
 
 Other men's children we love not quite so well as our 
 
 own, and 
 Error that's born of our blood closely we hug to our 
 
 heart. 
 
 Life. 
 Counsel and guidance you ask ; try this, and try that 
 
 and the other : 
 Living will teach you to live better than preacher or 
 
 book. 
 
38 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Saints and Sinners. 
 
 Greatest saints we know have been the most kindly 
 
 to sinners: 
 Here I'm a saint with the best ; sinners I never could 
 
 hate. 
 
 Evil cures Evil. 
 
 Tell me how to get rid of the sparrows, grumbled the 
 
 gardener ; 
 Sparrows, and beetles to boot, beetles and grubs in 
 
 the ground ; 
 Moles and wasps and worms, the slimy spawn of the 
 
 Devil ; 
 Let them alone, and they will eat one another, be sure ! 
 
 The best Vantage-grotind. 
 
 Life's vantage-ground, the best I know, 
 Is this — to own the merits of your foe. 
 
 A Hypochondrist. 
 
 The Devil take the people ! plague 
 
 On all the human race ! 
 And thus I vow to shut the door 
 On all the vermin, nevermore 
 
 To look them in the face ! 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 39 
 
 But scarcely had I flung my ban 
 
 On all the hateful human clan, 
 
 And let them go, to find their level 
 
 With God, themselves, or with the Devil, 
 
 When I met this one, and that other, 
 
 And said, — God bless you, my good brother ! 
 
 Impatience. 
 Why seek at once to dive into 
 The depth of all that meets your view ? 
 Wait for the melting of the snow. 
 And then you'll see what lies below. 
 
 Society. 
 A quiet learned man from dinner 
 Came back one day, a weary sinner : 
 "How did you like the guests?" — "The guests," 
 He said, " were men, and the host well fed them, 
 But had they been books, I wouldn't have read them ! " 
 
 Mundiis vult decipi, decipiatur. 
 Let doctors dispute, and logicians conclude. 
 And pedants protest with a frown on their brow ; 
 From the birth of old Time all the wise and the good 
 Agree in the gospel I preach to you now, — 
 If you wait till the fool shall grow wise, you will wait 
 Till the round shall grow square, and the crooked 
 
 grow straight ; 
 Treat the fool like a fool, and you'll give him his due. 
 
40 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Merlin the wizard, when I was a youth, 
 
 From his radiant sepulchre, told me the truth 
 
 With oracular voice, as I tell it to you, — 
 
 If you wait till the fool shall grow wise, you will wait 
 
 Till the round shall grow square, and the crooked 
 
 grow straight ; 
 Treat the fool as a fool, and you give him his due. 
 
 From the shrines of the rock in far Indian land, 
 From the tombs of the kings 'neath the Memphian 
 
 sand. 
 On the wings of the wind this old oracle flew, — 
 If you wait till the fool shall grow wise, you will wait 
 Till the round shall grow square, and the crooked 
 
 grow straight ; 
 Treat the fool like a fool — 'tis his right, and his due. 
 
 Judgment. 
 I can promise to be sincere ; to be impartial, not. 
 
 Prosperity. 
 
 Men may bear much from fits of harsh severity, 
 But not a long run of unmixed prosperity. 
 
 Good-humoiir. 
 
 Give me the man who bears a big load lightly. 
 
 And looks on grave things with a blithe face brightly; 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 41 
 
 And when he flings a stinging jest on others, 
 Laughs at himself, and says,— ^^ all are brothers! 
 
 Love. 
 
 Whatever stores of fact or fable 
 
 You've gathered to inform your soul, 
 
 Will be mere discord worse than Babel, 
 Unless pure love unite the whole ! 
 
 Old Age. 
 
 An old man is a kind of King Lear. 
 The men with thee that bravely strove 
 Are wandered far, or gone above ; 
 And they who leant upon thy breast, 
 On other cushions now find rest. 
 Young folks for the young folks are here, 
 And have no word to say to thee ; 
 Nor thou hast right to say to them. 
 Come boys, be old and wise with me / 
 
 Secrecy. 
 
 If a strong arm and a brave, fearless spirit 
 Are qualities that most become a man, 
 Deep secrecy, and firm rein on the tongue, 
 Suit him no less ; divine of goddesses. 
 Ruler of peoples, counsellor of princes. 
 Wise Reticence, that through the storms of life 
 Helmed my frail bark securely. 
 
42 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Wilfulness. 
 
 The man who brooks no self-control fulfils 
 Not the first simplest duty of all men 
 To make wise choice of food and drink, which he, 
 As being free from brutish bonds, should do 
 Freely and wisely ; but we see him rather 
 Even as a child, the slave to every taste 
 That lords his palate. He disdains to mix 
 His wine with water, and with hasty gulp 
 Swills all strong drinks and high-spiced liquors down 
 His inconsiderate throat, and after talks 
 Of bad digestion, fevered blood, and dull 
 Despondency, and passion's fitful sway ; 
 And then he rates dame Nature, and harsh Fate, 
 Not his own folly. Let him chance be sick, 
 He calls a doctor. "Well. Sir Doctor, I 
 You see lie sickly here, God knows for why ; 
 But you must know the cure, and you must work 
 My swift recovery." " Well," replies the leech, 
 " This food avoid and that." " Nay, but I can't." 
 " Then take this draught." "No; that tastes as dis- 
 tilled 
 From Stygian pools : against such drug my whole 
 Nature rebels." " Well, if you will not own 
 The grateful force of drugs, one cure remains : 
 Drink water." " Water ! — no, not I ! — no dog 
 Could bite me into hydrophobia 
 More than the hate of water I was born with." 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 43 
 
 " Well, then, I cannot help you." " Cannot ?— why ? " 
 
 " From day to day your illness must grow worse, 
 
 And, though it kill you not, will heap you up 
 
 With highest power of pains." " O most wise leech ! 
 
 You are a doctor ; my disease you know, 
 
 And you should know the cure, and how to come 
 
 So softly with the cunning of your craft ; 
 
 But you but shame the art which you profess 
 
 By drugs that work more pain than the disease." 
 
 Who could believe such brainless talk from men. 
 
 And yet we hear it ! 
 
 The Temporary and the Eternal. 
 
 Nothing may perish 
 
 Beneath the sky ; 
 All things have their issues 
 
 That mortals try. 
 We are here for a day. 
 To stamp on the clay, 
 A part of ourselves 
 
 That never may die. 
 
 Delay in Business. 
 
 Why this delay ? — only who runs may win ! 
 Well, laziness, you know, is not my sin ; 
 But, somehow, when great things I would achieve, 
 I find a fool from whom I must ask leave. 
 
44 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Danger. 
 
 Success 
 Snatched boldly from the moment, not the note 
 Of fearful apprehension wields the reins 
 That sway the course of danger. 
 
 Occttpation. 
 
 If I am banned from thinking, and from doing, 
 
 Life is no life to me. Forbid the fine 
 
 Silk- weaving worm to weave its web, for that 
 
 He spins himself to death, and may not cease 
 
 Till from his life of life he hath spun out 
 
 A costly thread to coffin him all round ! 
 
 Oh that a god might grant to us some day, 
 
 Even like this worm, to spin ourselves to death. 
 
 And in a larger, sunnier world reborn. 
 
 To flap our wings with joy ! 
 
 Miracle. 
 
 When in the world a miracle appears, 
 
 'Tis faithful loving hearts that work the wonder. 
 
 Love and Friendship. 
 
 True FRIENDSHIP shows its worth in stern refusal 
 At the right moment ; and strong love sometimes 
 Heaps the loved one with ruin, when it serves 
 The will more than the weal of who demands. 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 45 
 
 And thou, my friend, as now I know thee, seemest 
 
 To hold that good for which thou hotly wishest. 
 
 And to transmute into a fact the fancy 
 
 That was the moment's birth. 'Twas often seen 
 
 That he who errs doth strive to compensate 
 
 By violence his lack of strength and will ; 
 
 I am thy friend, and hold it for my duty 
 
 To slow the speed that spurs thee to thy wrong. 
 
 Rejuvenescence. 
 
 Not in the grave, or in the world beyond, 
 A noble man looks for new springs of life, 
 But looks within, and with strange wonder finds 
 A new life there that makes him young again. 
 
 Love. 
 
 If heaven were mine, with only me in heaven. 
 Few hells could be more hard for me to live in ! 
 
 Knowledge of Men. 
 
 No man fears men, but he who knows them not ; 
 And he who shuns them may not hope to know them. 
 
 Patience. • 
 
 Nay, don't lose heart ; small men and mighty nations 
 Have learned a great deal when they practise patience. 
 
46 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Lies. 
 
 Would you tell lies to cheat the people ? No ! 
 I'm a plain man, and tell you plainly — No ! 
 But if you will tell lies, cut a broad slice 
 With a free hand, and don't be over-nice ! 
 
 The Golden Age. 
 
 My friend, your golden age is gone, 
 
 But good men still can bring it back again ; 
 
 Rather, if I must speak the truth, I'll say 
 
 The golden age of which the poet sings 
 
 In flattering phrase, this age at no time was 
 
 On Earth one whit more than it is to-day ; 
 
 And, if it ever was, 'twas only so. 
 
 As all good men can bring it back to-morrow. 
 
 Self -knowledge. 
 
 'Tis no doubt pleasant 
 Ourselves with our own selves to occupy, 
 Were but the profit equal to the pleasure. 
 Inwardly no man can his inmost self 
 Discern ; the gauge that from himself he takes 
 Measures him now too small, and now too great. 
 Only in man man knows himself, and only 
 Life teaches each man what each man is worth. 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 47 
 
 Quarrels. 
 When two men quarrel, who owns the coolest head 
 Is most to blame. 
 
 Good Society. 
 
 READER. 
 
 What means this rabble of low people here — 
 
 Quack doctor, juggler, beggar, gondolier.'* 
 
 Hast seen no good society, that you 
 
 Should waste good verse on such uncultured crew '^. 
 
 POET. 
 
 Oh yes ! your good society, in the mint 
 
 Of courts 'tis coined, and very well I know it ; 
 
 So fine and featureless, it leaves no hint 
 For smallest touch of nature to a poet. 
 
 Prophets. 
 
 Who spouts his message to the wilderness 
 Lightens his soul, and feels one burden less : 
 But to the people preach, and you will find 
 They'll pay you back with thanks ill to your mind. 
 
 Monicmeiits. 
 
 The marble bears his name, and tells his story. 
 But you'll forgive me, if I hint the truth : 
 You gild the monument in honest sooth, 
 Not for his honour, but for your own glory. 
 
48 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Envy. 
 
 Envy must be : e'en let her feed her grudge ! 
 Truth will shine out, when time shall be the judge ; 
 'Tis an old use that hath been, and will be. 
 That where the sun his liberal light may throw. 
 The heat comes with it, and the grass will grow. 
 
 Youth. 
 
 Who may be proud ? the young : for why ? the pride 
 Of life is theirs, and Time is on their side. 
 
 Divide et Impera. 
 
 Divide and rule, the politician cries ; 
 Unite and lead, is watchword of the wise. 
 
 Slander. 
 
 Go north and south on German ground, 
 Eastward and westward wander, 
 
 Two nasty things you'll find abound — 
 Tobacco-smoke, and slander. 
 
 Utopia. 
 
 Your lazy loon, if dainty pigeons 
 Up to his mouth well roasted flew, 
 He would not taste them, no, not he. 
 Unless well carved and served up too ! 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 49 
 
 Perversity. 
 
 An ill-starred devil is the man, 
 Who will not do the thing he can ; 
 And what he can't, with blind ambition 
 Will do, and works his own perdition. 
 
 To-day. 
 
 To-day, to-day, only show valiant face. 
 
 And you have gained a hundred days of grace. 
 
 Solitude and Society. 
 
 In still retreat a thoughtful talent thrives. 
 But in the stream and current of the world 
 The character grows strong. 
 
 Limits of Humanity. 
 
 When the eternal 
 Father of gods and men 
 Soweth with kindly hand 
 Forth from the rolling clouds 
 Lightnings of blessing 
 Over the fields of Earth, 
 Humbly, then, I the last 
 Hem of his garment kiss, 
 With the love and the fear 
 CTf a child in my breast. 
 
 D 
 
50 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 For with the gods 
 
 May no son of man compare : 
 
 If upward he soareth, 
 
 Touching with head sublime 
 
 Stars that eternal shine, 
 
 Nowhere he finds there 
 
 Place for his foot to stand, 
 
 And with him freely 
 
 Sport there the birds and clouds. 
 
 When he with strong 
 
 And marrowy bones stands 
 
 On the well-grounded 
 
 Base of the solid earth, 
 
 Not even then 
 
 He dares with the oak compare, 
 
 Or with the vine 
 
 That clambers around its trunk. 
 
 Say what distinguisheth 
 Gods from the sons of men ? 
 They are as waves 
 That rolling-on waves flow 
 • In an eternal stream : 
 Us the wave lifteth, 
 Us the wave whelmeth, 
 And we are seen no more. 
 
 Small is the ring 
 
 That claspeth our life round ; 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 51 
 
 And generations 
 On generations 
 Coming and going, 
 Add link to link 
 Of an infinite chain. 
 
 The Vocation of Man. 
 
 Noble be man, 
 Friendly and good. 
 For goodness alone 
 Stamps him diverse 
 From all the creatures 
 That walk the earth. 
 
 Hail to the unknown 
 Mightier beings 
 Whom we anticipate ! 
 What in the human 
 Typed we behold 
 Leads to a faith 
 In the primal Divine. 
 
 For Nature knows 
 No feeling for man ; 
 The sun doth shine 
 On the bad and the good 
 On fair and on foul 
 With indifferent eye 
 Look moon and stars. 
 
THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Wind and water, 
 Thunder and hail, 
 Rush on their path, 
 And with hasty clutch 
 They seize as they pass 
 This one and that. 
 
 Even so Fortune 
 Blindly seizes 
 Now the light locks 
 Of innocent boyhood, 
 Now the bald crown 
 Of the hoary offender. 
 
 Bound by eternal 
 
 All-embracing 
 
 Iron decrees, 
 
 We must accomplish 
 
 Each man his fated 
 
 Circle of being. 
 
 But in the human 
 Range of his action 
 Man, like a god, 
 May achieve the impossible 
 He distinguishes. 
 Chooses and judges, 
 And gives to the moment 
 The stamp of endurance. 
 
LIFE, CHARACTER, AND MORALS. 53 
 
 He alone 
 
 Rewardeth the good, 
 Chastiseth the bad, 
 And all extravagant 
 Random endeavours 
 Binds v^ith the bond 
 Of a common design. 
 
 And we wisely 
 Adore the Immortals, 
 Deeming them brothered 
 With what is most human, 
 In the great cosmos, 
 Willing and working 
 What in their small lives 
 Men may achieve. 
 
 The noble man 
 
 Be friendly and good, 
 
 Shaping unwearied 
 
 The useful, the right, 
 
 Planting before us 
 
 A sensible type 
 
 Of those beings unseen 
 
 Whom by faith we divine ! 
 
RELIGION 
 
 Mtx ^ott aljnrf ist Ijodj ^n Ijalten ; 
 genu zx foirb itic im ^t^Ialjtin foalt«n. 
 
RELIGION. 
 
 Reverence — The Three Stages of Religion. 
 
 Healthy children, born under favourable influ- 
 ences, bring much into the world with them. Nature 
 has given to every one all he needs for time and 
 eternity ; the duty of the educator and trainer is to 
 develop this ; and most frequently it develops best 
 when left to itself. But there is one thing no one 
 brings with him into the world, and it is a thing on 
 which everything else depends ; that thing by means 
 of which every man that is born into the world be- 
 comes truly manly. This thing is Reverence; of 
 which there are three kinds, or, if you will, three 
 stages. These we endeavour to implant in the minds 
 of our pupils, with the symbolical accompaniment of 
 three attitudes or postures. The first kind is rever- 
 ence for that which is above us; and the attitude 
 connected with this is that in which, with the arms 
 crossed over the breast, our pupils are taught to look 
 joyfully towards the heavens. By this we ask from 
 
58 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 them an acknowledgment that there is a God on high 
 who reflects and reveals Himself in the person of 
 parents, teachers, and superiors. The second type is 
 reverence for that which is beneath us. The hands 
 clasped as though bound, behind the back, the down- 
 ward, smiling look, in the attitude belonging to this 
 type, indicate that we should look upon the earth 
 graciously and cheerfully; for it is the earth that 
 affords us the means of subsistence, and is the source 
 of innumerable joys, though, along with these, it no 
 doubt brings not seldom disproportionate sufferings. 
 When a man receives any physical hurt, whether by 
 his own fault or innocently; or when another injures 
 him, either of set purpose or accidentally ; when in 
 any way harmful terrestrial forces and influences in- 
 vade him harshly; — let the young person learn to 
 ponder seriously on these things ; and let him know 
 that from such dangers he cannot altogether escape 
 so long as he lives. But from this attitude we set 
 our pupil free as soon as possible, the moment we are 
 assured the lesson it is intended to convey has had its 
 proper effect ; then we call on him to brace himself 
 like a man, and turning to his comrades, to pit him- 
 self against them. Now he stands firm and bold, but 
 not selfishly isolated. Only in conflict with his fel- 
 lows can the young man learn to face the world. 
 Our third attitude indicates this : standing upright 
 and with forward look, they take their stations no 
 longer singly, but linked together in a row. 
 
RELIGION. 59 
 
 From these considerations we see the reason why 
 the tone of mind in the majority of people in the 
 world is so low, and so pregnant with unhappiness : 
 their evil judging and evil talking is but the natural 
 fruit of their want of reverence. Whosoever surren- 
 ders himself to this temper learns to despise the 
 world, to hate his neighbour instead of loving him, 
 and even at last to become indifferent to God ; and 
 that feeling of proper self-respect and healthy self- 
 assertion, without which a man cannot work effect- 
 ively in the world, loses itself in conceit and inso- 
 lence. . . . This reverence, I repeat, we bring not 
 with us into the world ; it is the growth of culture. 
 Fear, no doubt, every man brings with him into the 
 world, and naturally enough ; not so Reverence. 
 From the earliest times we find in the breast of the 
 lowest savages a fear before the mighty phenomena 
 of Nature, and other inexplicable forces and ominous 
 influences. But this fear is not reverence. We fear 
 an unknown Being or a heaven ; this feeling the 
 strong man seeks to overcome, the weak man to 
 escape from ; both strive to shake themselves free of 
 it, and think themselves fortunate when they have set 
 it aside for a short time, and their nature has scope 
 to reassert itself as in some measure free and inde- 
 pendent. The natural man repeats this operation a 
 million times in his life ; he struggles from fear into 
 freedom, and is driven again back into fear ; and in 
 the end remains just where he was. To fear is easy 
 
6o THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 but oppressive ; to reverence, difficult but full of 
 solace. Only reluctantly does man make up his 
 mind to reverence; or rather he never does so for 
 himself. It is a higher sense, which must be im- 
 parted to his nature, and which is self-developed in 
 a few favoured beings, who have on this account 
 been in all ages held as saints, or even as gods. And 
 herein lies the virtue and operative force of all true 
 religions ; and of these there are only three, classed 
 according to the object of their worship. 
 
 No religion founded upon mere fear comes under 
 any estimation with us. With the reverence which 
 any one allows to sway his soul, he can always retain 
 self-respect, however low he may prostrate himself 
 before a superior; he is not, as in the case of fear, 
 set at variance with himself. 
 
 The religion which is founded on reverence for 
 what is above us we call ethnic, or, as it is in vulgar 
 English, heathen. It is the religion of the nations 
 (efli'Tj), and the first happy deliverance from abject 
 fear. To this class belong all pagan religions, what- 
 ever names they may bear. The second type of 
 religion, founded upon the reverence we cherish for 
 what is on a par with ourselves, we call the philo- 
 sophical ; for the philosopher, who takes a central 
 position, must draw down to his level what is above, 
 while he seeks to elevate what is below; and only 
 when in this middle state does he deserve the name 
 of a sage. In so far, then, as he has a clear insight 
 
RELIGION. 6i 
 
 into his relations to his equals, and to all humanity, 
 as also to all his earthly surroundings, whether neces- 
 sary or casual, does he live, cosmically speaking, in 
 the truth. But now we must speak of the third type, 
 founded on reverence for what is beneath us : this is 
 Christianity ; for in it chiefly is this sentiment domin- 
 ant. It is the highest step in the ladder of reverence 
 to which humanity can attain ; for, consider only 
 what extraordinary moral force is required to be in 
 a religion, which could not merely let the world drop 
 from its view, claiming for itself a higher home, 
 but could recognise obscurity and poverty, disgrace 
 and contempt, ignominy and misery, suffering and 
 death, as being something godlike ; yea, and could 
 conceive a certain honour even in sin itself, and in 
 crime, transmuting them from hindrances and ob- 
 structions into means of positive progress to the saint. 
 Of this sentiment no doubt we find traces in all ages ; 
 but a trace is not the goal ; and once this height has 
 been reached, mankind cannot recur to a lower plat- 
 form ; and we may thus say that the Christian reli- 
 gion, having once appeared on the earth, cannot dis- 
 appear ; nor, having once assumed a divine embodi- 
 ment on the stage of humanity, ever again retreat, 
 and be as if it had not been. 
 
 These three types together form the true religion ; 
 and the religious man of highest culture now pro- 
 fesses virtually all the three. From these three em- 
 bodied types springs the consummation of all rever- 
 
62 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 ences, — the reverence for one's self; out of which the 
 other three again develop themselves. And so man in 
 this way reaches the highest of which he is capable, 
 and may think of himself as the acme of all that God 
 and nature have produced ; may even dwell on this 
 height with a healthy complacency, without being 
 dragged down to the common level by conceit and 
 selfishness. And all this, in fact, however it may 
 appear new to some, exists already in the Credo of 
 the Christian Churches : for the first article is ethnic, 
 and belongs to all peoples; the second is Christian 
 to those struggling with suffering or victorious over 
 it ; the third teaches a spiritual communion of saints 
 — that is to say, of those in the highest degree good 
 and wise. Should not, therefore, the three divine 
 persons under whose symbolism and names such 
 convictions and promises are expressed, be justly held 
 to be in the highest sense a unity? 
 
 Religion — Theology. 
 
 " I believe in God ! " that is a fair and a laudable 
 profession ; but to acknowledge God when and wher- 
 ever He may reveal Himself, this is the only true 
 blessedness upon earth. 
 
 Theism — Theology. 
 
 The theological argument for the existence of God 
 has been demolished, it is said, by critical reason ; so 
 
RELIGION. 63 
 
 be it : but what reason fails to prove, feeling, which is 
 equally of divine origin, may be bold to assert. Who 
 can forbid us in the lightning and the thunder and 
 the storm to feel the nearness of an Almighty Power ? 
 and in the fragrance of the flowers and the whisper- 
 ings of the breeze, the loving approaches of a Being 
 who lives in habitual communion with us? 
 
 Religion atid the Age. 
 
 At all times it is the individual that preaches the 
 truth, not the age. It was the age that gave Socrates 
 hemlock for his supper; the age that burnt Huss. 
 The age is always the same. 
 
 Aspects of Theological Sentiment. 
 
 For myself I honestly confess that, drawn as my 
 soul is in many different directions, I do not feel my- 
 self completely satisfied with any one aspect of divine 
 things : as a poet and an artist, I am more or less a 
 polytheist, as a natural philosopher I am a pantheist, 
 and the one neither more nor less than the other ; and 
 if I require a personal God for my personality as a 
 moral being, there is provision made in my mental 
 constitution for this also. 
 
 Chance. 
 
 That which in the enterprises of human beings 
 transcends all calculation, and which is apt to show 
 
64 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 its power most precisely when human nature is lifting 
 itself most proudly — what men call chance— this is 
 just God, who in this incomprehensible way invades 
 our little sphere with His omnipotence, and disturbs 
 our grandest plans, by the intrusion of what to us is 
 a mere accident, but to Him is part of an all-embrac- 
 ing bond. 
 
 The Bible. 
 I am persuaded that the Bible will always appear 
 to us more beautiful, the more it is understood, — that 
 is to say, the more we comprehend that every word in 
 it which we take up in its universal significance, and 
 apply to our own case, had always an immediate and 
 peculiar application connected with the circumstances 
 out of which it arose. 
 
 The Bible — Prijiciples of Hermeneutics. 
 
 As far back as my twentieth year, I can trace the 
 existence of a certain fundamental conception, or fixed 
 way of viewing things in my mind — whether of native 
 growth or by inoculation from some external source, 
 I cannot say ; a conception which I applied to all 
 matters of oral or written tradition. In all such mat- 
 ters, I said to myself, the important thing is the fun- 
 damental fact, the internal force, the significance, the 
 tendency ; in this alone what is original, divine, oper- 
 ative, unassailable, and indestructible in the tradition, 
 resides ; this central and substantial kernel of the 
 
RELIGION. 65 
 
 matter remains unaffected by any change of condition 
 that time can produce, just as a well-conditioned soul 
 is not disturbed by any accident that may befall the 
 body in which it lies encased. Language, dialect, 
 style, and written tradition are thus to be regarded as 
 the mere body or bearer of a spiritual work ; and this 
 body, however closely connected with the internal 
 spirit, is nevertheless subject to deterioration or cor- 
 ruption in many ways ; and indeed, in point of fact, it 
 is impossible, in the nature of things, that any tradi- 
 tion should be handed down through long ages quite 
 pure, or, even if it were handed down in perfect 
 purity, that it should be understood through all ages 
 in the same way that it was originally accepted ; the 
 former on account of the imperfection of the instru- 
 ments through which it is handed down, the latter on 
 account of the difference of times and places, and 
 above all, the diversity of human capacities and ways 
 of thinking ; a difference which lies at the root of that 
 notable divergence of views which never fails to mani- 
 fest itself in the schools of antagonistic expositors. 
 
 Any person, therefore, who has occasion to occupy 
 himself with the contents of any written tradition, 
 must endeavour to get hold of the marrow of the mat- 
 ter, and that not merely in the way of an intellectual 
 cognition, but in its living relation to his own inner 
 life, and the fruitful action which it produces there ; 
 while whatever in the record is of the nature of an 
 external shell, and remains without any moral action 
 
 E 
 
66 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 upon our souls, or may perhaps even be liable to the 
 suspicion of adulteration, must be thrown aside as of 
 no value for us personally, and left to the disposal of 
 scientific criticism, which, however it may pull in 
 pieces, and tear asunder this part or the other of the 
 whole, can never succeed in robbing us of what we 
 had appropriated in a living way as the root and 
 marrow of the business, or even for a moment making 
 us sceptical as to the fundamental facts which we had 
 sifted out of the kernel of the tradition. 
 
 A conviction of this kind, growing out of faith and 
 experimental appropriation, which in all matters of 
 the highest importance is the only effective and oper- 
 ative conviction, lies at the foundation of the moral 
 and literary architecture of my life, and is to be looked 
 upon as a well-invested capital on which a man may 
 richly draw, though, no doubt, in individual cases it 
 may be found wanting. Such a conviction it was that 
 made the Bible in my early years effectively acces- 
 sible to me. I had read it through several times in 
 the way that is natural to the well-brought-up sons of 
 Protestant parents, and, besides, had plunged into it 
 here and there in a less systematic way, as inclination 
 or edification prompted. The plain-spoken natural- 
 ness of the Old Testament, and the tender naivete of 
 the New, had in individual sections taken a strong 
 hold of me ; as a whole, no doubt, I was not able to 
 construct it to my satisfaction; but the varieties or 
 apparent contradictions of the different books did one 
 
RELIGION. 67 
 
 affect my belief in the fundamental conceptions which 
 lay at the root of them all ; the significance of each, if 
 not the harmony of the whole, I could fruitfully realise ; 
 and, altogether, I had put too much of my best soul 
 into this book to be able ever afterwards to dispense 
 with it as part of my spiritual nourishment. This 
 enlistment of my best feelings on the side of the book 
 made me proof through life against whatever sneers 
 or raillery I might find directed against it ; for the 
 spiritual good of which I had been partaker from the 
 book had convinced me experimentally of the dis- 
 honesty of all such irreverent assaults. On the other 
 hand, any kind of thorough critical research honestly 
 meant was grateful to me ; all extension of our know- 
 ledge with regard to oriental localities and costumes 
 I appropriated eagerly, and I employed them without 
 fear in the large and liberal interpretation of the tra- 
 ditions which my spiritual experience had made so 
 dear to me. 
 
 With the New Testament I proceeded in the same 
 fearless fashion ; but however far, in the exercise of 
 critical ingenuity, I might pull the record to pieces, 
 I always carried with me that most salutary word : 
 " The Evangelists may contradict themselves as much 
 as they please^ so long as the Evangel does not cotitra- 
 dict itself." 
 
68 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 The Bible. 
 
 That great homage which the Bible has received 
 from many peoples and from many successive genera- 
 tions it owes to its own intrinsic worth. It is not a 
 book of folk-lore, as other such are found in numbers, 
 but a book for all folk and all peoples, because it 
 takes the fortunes of one people and makes them the 
 symbol of the fortunes of every people, carries back 
 the history of that people to the creation of the world, 
 and through a long graduated process of secular and 
 spiritual development and of events partly necessary 
 and partly accidental, carries them forward into the 
 most distant domain of possible eternities. 
 
 Two Points of View for the Bible. 
 
 There are two points of view from which Biblical 
 matters may be contemplated. The one point is what 
 we may call the standpoint of a sort of primal reli- 
 gion, co-ordinate with the existence of the human 
 species, which point of view is essentially of divine 
 origin. Religion, so considered, is eternally the same, 
 and will remain what it is and was, so long as beings 
 exist in the world capable of knowing divine things ; 
 but it is a religion only for a few elect souls, far too 
 high and noble for general reception. The other 
 point of view is that of the Church, which has more 
 of a merely human character ; it is never free from a 
 
RELIGION. 69 
 
 certain weakness, and is always, however impercep- 
 tibly, going through a certain process of change ; in 
 spite of all which, however, it will persistently remain 
 on the earth, so long as weak human beings inhabit 
 it. The light of undimmed divine revelation is far too 
 pure and too bright to be tolerable to poor weak hu- 
 manity. The Church steps in as a mediator between 
 the divine fountain of light and the human recipient, 
 and by its mediation so moderates the action of the 
 highest truth as to render it salutary to all, and a 
 source of adequate blessedness to many. 
 
 Luther and the Bible. 
 
 Luther sees in the Old and New Testaments the 
 symbol of the great cosmic Being, who in His mani- 
 festation is ever repeating Himself in diverse forms. 
 In the Old Testament he sees Law, which strives 
 after its consummation in Love ; in the New he sees 
 Love, which asserts itself against Law, which it at the 
 same time fulfils by planting it on a higher platform 
 — not, however, by any power or virtue residing in the 
 individual, but by faith, and that an exclusive faith, 
 in the all-revealing and all-working Messiah. This 
 single point will be enough to let us see how Luther- 
 anism never can come to any agreement with Popery, 
 while on the other hand there is nothing in it that 
 should lead it to refuse an alliance with pure reason, 
 so soon as pure reason consents to look on the Bible 
 
70 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 as a mirror of the moral history of the world — a feat 
 which it should not in any wise be difficult for pure 
 reason to achieve. 
 
 Bible Societies. 
 
 People have quarrelled and will quarrel much 
 about the advantage or disadvantage of promiscuous 
 Bible circulation. To me it is quite clear that the 
 Bible will continue to do harm, as it has hitherto 
 done, when used in the interest of scholastic dogma 
 or fantastic mysticism; while it will continue to do 
 good in the future, as it has done in the past, wher- 
 ever the element of moral purity and devout sentiment 
 is dominant in its treatment. 
 
 Tme Religion, 
 
 Religion, most properly so called, is always a mat- 
 ter of the inner man, and a thing specially belonging 
 to the individual ; for it has to do directly with the 
 conscience, at one time to rouse it from lethargy, at 
 another time to soothe it when fretted. For the con- 
 science in any breast may exist in a numbed, dull, 
 and ineffective state ; on a person suffering under such 
 a moral cachexy, religion acts as a stimulant : or 
 again, the consciousness of sin, with remorseful un- 
 rest accompanying the same, may become so intense 
 as to embitter existence : here religion steps in as a 
 balm. 
 
RELIGION. 71 
 
 Christianity. 
 
 The Christian religion is a mighty lever, by the 
 help of which degraded and suffering humanity has 
 again and again been strengthened to lift itself out of 
 the mire ; and by allowing it the possession of this 
 great moral efficiency, we place it on a platform 
 higher than all philosophy, and where, indeed, for the 
 manifestation of its highest virtue no philosophy is 
 required. 
 
 Corruption of Christianity. 
 
 Shortly after its promulgation, Christianity suffered 
 from an invasion of subtle and senseless heresies, 
 whereby it lost its original purity. Further on, when 
 it attempted to control and to mould altogether rude 
 and morally degraded peoples, drastic measures were 
 necessary ; and then, not teaching so much as litur- 
 gical services and ceremonials, came into play. For 
 converts of such rude type the one mediator, whom 
 we all know, between God in heaven and earthly man, 
 was not sufficient ; and in this way arose that strange 
 compound of heathenism and Hebraism, which, under 
 the name of Christianity, has asserted itself through 
 the centuries with notable display. 
 
 Luther. 
 
 It is difficult for us fully to realise how much we 
 owe to Luther and the Reformation, not only in the 
 
72 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Church, but as human beings and members of human 
 society. We have been emancipated from the fetters 
 of intellectual limitation ; and as a consequence of 
 our progressive culture, starting from the point of his 
 Protest, w^e have become capable of going back to 
 the fountain-head, and reaching Christianity in its 
 original purity. We have the courage again to stand 
 with firm foot upon God's earth, and to feel our dig- 
 nity as reasonable creatures inheriting glorious gifts 
 from God. Let intellectual culture mount as high as 
 it may, let the natural sciences expand and extend to 
 an indefinite amount, and let the mind of man career 
 freely in the widest conceivable range — at no stage of 
 human progress is it possible that humanity should 
 rise above, and plant itself beyond, the light and 
 ethical culture of Christianity, as it shines forth and 
 radiates with unsullied splendour in the Gospels. 
 
 And the more thoroughly and earnestly we Pro- 
 testants advance to the practical comprehension of this 
 pure evangelic Christianity, the more quickly will the 
 Catholics follow in our track, till at length it will 
 come about that Protestants and Catholics meet in a 
 common form of Christianity, redeemed from all ad- 
 ventitious impurities. Then also the wretched petty 
 sectarian activity into which Protestantism has shown 
 a tendency to resolve itself will cease, and between 
 father, son, sister and mother, natural love, not 
 unnatural hatred, will prevail. And all of us by 
 degrees will learn to elevate ourselves out of a Chris- 
 
RELIGION. 73 
 
 tianity of catechisms and creeds, into a. Cliristianity 
 of pure sentiment and noble action. 
 
 Abuse of the Divine Name. 
 
 People treat the divine name as if that incompre- 
 hensible and most high Being, who is even beyond 
 the reach of thought, w^ere only their equal. Other- 
 wise, they would not say the Lord God, the dear 
 God, the good God. This expression becomes to them, 
 especially to the clergy, who have it daily in their 
 mouths, a mere phrase, a barren name, to which no 
 thought is attached whatever. If they were truly 
 impressed by His greatness they would be dumb, 
 and through veneration unwilling to name Him. 
 
 Honesty and Orthodoxy. 
 
 In religious, scientific, and political matters, I 
 generally brought trouble upon myself, because I was 
 no hypocrite, and had the courage to express what 
 I felt. 
 
 I believed in God and in Nature, and in the triumph 
 of good over evil ; but this was not enough for the 
 godly people : I was required to believe other points, 
 which were opposed to the feeling of my soul for 
 truth ; besides, I did not see how these notions 
 could be of the slightest service to me. 
 
74 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Immortality. 
 
 Man is entitled to believe in immortality; such 
 belief is agreeable to his nature ; and his instincts in 
 this direction are confirmed by religious assurances. 
 My belief in the immortality of the soul springs from 
 the idea of activity; for v^^hen I persevere to the 
 end in a course of restless activity, I have a sort 
 of guarantee from Nature that, when the present form 
 of my existence proves itself inadequate for the ener- 
 gising of my spirit, she will provide another form 
 more appropriate. 
 
 When a man is seventy-five years old, he cannot 
 avoid now and then thinking of death. This thought, 
 when it comes, leaves me in a state of perfect peace, 
 for I have the most assured conviction that our soul 
 is of an essence absolutely indestructible ; an essence 
 that works on from eternity to eternity. It is like the 
 sun, which to our earthly eyes sinks and sets, but in 
 reality never sinks, but shines on unceasingly. 
 
 Lnmortality and Tiedge. 
 
 I have had to endure not a little from Tiedge's 
 ' Urania ; ' for, at one time, nothing was sung and 
 nothing was declaimed but this same ' Urania.' 
 Wherever you went, you found ' Urania ' on the 
 table. ' Urania * and immortality were the topics of 
 every conversation. I would by no means dispense 
 
RELIGION. 75 
 
 with the happiness of believing in a future existence, 
 and, indeed, would say, with Lorenzo de Medici, that 
 those are dead even for this life who hope for no other. 
 But such incomprehensible matters lie too far off to 
 be a theme of daily meditation and thought-distract- 
 ing speculation. Let him who believes in immortality 
 enjoy his happiness in silence, he has no reason to 
 give himself airs about it. The occasion of Tiedge's 
 ' Urania ' led me to observe that piety, like nobility, 
 has its aristocracy. I met stupid women, who 
 plumed themselves on believing, with Tiedge, in 
 immortality, and I was forced to bear much dark 
 examination on this point. They were vexed by my 
 saying I should be well pleased if, after the close of 
 this life, we were blessed with another, only I hoped 
 I should hereafter meet none of those who had be- 
 lieved in it here. For how should I be tormented ! 
 The godly people would throng around me, and say. 
 Were we not right.? Did we not predict it? Has 
 not it happened just as we said ? And so there 
 would be ennui without end even in the other world. 
 This occupation with the idea of immortality is 
 for people of rank, and especially ladies, who have 
 nothing to do. But an able man, who has some- 
 thing regular to do here, and must toil and strug- 
 gle and produce day by day, leaves the future world 
 to itself, and is active and useful in this. Thoughts 
 about immortality are also good for those who have 
 not been very successful here ; and I would wager 
 
76 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 that, if the good Tiedge had enjoyed a better lot, he 
 would also have had better thoughts. 
 
 Religion of Daily Life. 
 
 Some persons, who throughout the whole twelve 
 months are worldly, think it necessary to be godly at 
 a time of straits ; all moral and religious matters they 
 regard as physic, which is to be taken, with aversion, 
 when they are unwell. In a clergyman, a moralist, 
 they see nothing but a doctor, whom they cannot soon 
 enough get rid of. Now, I confess, I look upon 
 religion as a kind of diet, which can be so only when 
 I make a constant practice of it, — when throughout 
 the whole twelve months I never lose sight of it. 
 
 Religion and Books. 
 
 The use of books, catechisms, sermons, and even 
 the Bible itself, in all the deeper matters of religion, 
 is secondary. The man to whom the universe does 
 not reveal directly what relation it has to him, — 
 whose heart does not tell him what he owes himself 
 and others,— that man will scarcely learn it out of 
 books, which generally do little more than give our 
 errors names. 
 
 Animal Instincts and God. 
 There is in the curious and kindly operation of 
 animal instincts something which, whosoever studies 
 
RELIGION. jj 
 
 and does not believe in God, will not be aided by 
 Moses and the prophets. In these instincts I per- 
 ceive what I call the omnipresence of the Deity, who 
 has everywhere spread and implanted a portion of His 
 endless love, and has intimated, even in the brute, as 
 a germ those qualities which blossom to perfection 
 in the noblest forms of man. 
 
 Religion and Superstition. 
 
 A tendency to superstition is of the very essence of 
 humanity ; and, when we think we have completely 
 extinguished it, we shall find it retreating into the 
 strangest nooks and corners, that it may issue out 
 thence on the first occasion it can do so with safety. 
 
 Spiritualism, Presentiments, Dreams, &^c. 
 
 Of all the superstitions which infest the brains 
 of weak mortals, the belief in prophecies, presenti- 
 ments, and dreams, seems to me amongst the most 
 pitiful and pernicious. By the traffic in such fancies 
 no doubt a certain fictitious significance is given to 
 the common events of daily life, in quiet times ; but 
 when in great epochs life becomes fraught with 
 seriousness, and a real significance, when the 
 storms of change are roaring and buffeting around 
 us, then the belief in those phantoms of feeble brains 
 only makes the commotion more terrible. 
 
78 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Time and Eternity. 
 
 I am heartily sorry for those persons who are con- 
 stantly talking of the perishable nature of things, 
 and the nothingness of human life ; for, for this very 
 end we are here, to stamp the perishable with an 
 imperishable worth ; and this can be done only by 
 taking a just estimate of both. 
 
 Religion and Metaphysics. 
 
 Man is not born to solve the problems of the 
 universe, but to find out where the problem begins, 
 and then to restrain himself within the limits of the 
 comprehensible. His faculties are not sufficient to 
 measure the activities of the universe; and an at- 
 tempt to explain the outer world by reason, from his 
 narrow point of view, is a vain endeavour. The 
 reason of man and the reason of the Deity are two 
 very different things. If we grant freedom to man, 
 there is an end to the omniscience of God ; for, if the 
 Divinity knows how I shall act, I must act so, per- 
 force. I give this merely as a sign how little we 
 know, and to show that it is not good to meddle with 
 divine mysteries. Moreover, we should only give 
 utterance to the highest truths so far as it can benefit 
 the world. What lies beyond the common appetite 
 and the common power of appropriation we should 
 keep within ourselves, and it will diffuse over our 
 
RELIGION. 79 
 
 actions a lustre like the mild radiance of a hidden 
 sun. 
 
 Religion. 
 
 Religion is not an end, but a means whereby to 
 reach .the highest culture through the greatest peace 
 of soul. 
 
 There are only two true religions : one which 
 recognises and adores the Holy in us and around us, 
 unclothed with any special form ; and another, which 
 recognises and worships it in the most beautiful form. 
 All intermediate religions are forms of idol-worship. 
 
 Religiojt and Good Works. 
 
 So soon as good works, and their merit before God, 
 were put out of view by the Protestants, pious senti- 
 ment and superfine sentimentalism came in to supply 
 their place. Men must have something to pride 
 themselves on. 
 
 Prayer and Providence. 
 
 As we do know a king by overflow 
 
 Of largesses — for what to him is little 
 
 Were wealth to thousands ; so we know your grace, 
 
 Ye mighty gods, by bounties long prepared 
 
 And wisely stored to serve man's needful hour ; 
 
 For only you know what is good for man. 
 
8o THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Before whose eyes the wide extended realm 
 Of the far future open lies, while we 
 With every peeping star and evening mist 
 Find our view shortened. With wise patience ye 
 List to our prayers that with childish fret 
 Cry out for instant answer ; but your hand 
 Breaks not the branch that bears the golden fruit 
 With bounty premature ; and woe to him 
 In your despite who plucks the unripe grace 
 With hasty hand, and feeds on bitter food 
 Till he may die ! 
 
 God and Humanity. 
 
 The good gods love the good and widely spread 
 Races of mortal kind, well pleased to stretch 
 His little term to man, and lend to him 
 For a short season, with a liberal grace, 
 The fellow- vision and the joy with them 
 Of their own deathless being in the sky. 
 
 Wisdo7n — Human and Divine. 
 
 Vain is all human wisdom, if the wise 
 Lend not their ears to list the will divine. 
 Upon some noble soul that grossly sinned. 
 Some god hath laid a sore atoning task 
 That seems to mock all strength of man, when lo ! 
 The hero conquers, and with one sure stroke 
 Devoutly serves the faithful-helping gods. 
 And the admiring world. 
 
RELIGION. 8i 
 
 Two Faces of Providence. 
 The gods who in their blazing potency 
 With fulminant volleys charge the weighty clouds, 
 And sternly kind the long-expected rain 
 With thunder voice and whirl of warring winds 
 Fling out in wild floods o'er the thirsty earth ; 
 They into blessing change the bane anon ; 
 And men that quaked with fearful expectation 
 Transform to joyful looks, soon as the new 
 Outbursting sun is seen a thousand times 
 Glassed in the dew-drops of the freshened leaves, 
 While purple Iris parts with friendly touch 
 The thin-wove tissue of the last grey cloud. 
 
 Religion — God — Sacrifice. 
 The gods are good, and do not thirst for blood ; 
 Who calls them vengeful but transfers the type 
 Of his own earthly nature into heaven, 
 And stamps them human. 
 
 Religion — Life. 
 The gods need many a noble man to do 
 Their work on earth. They count on me and you. 
 
 Duties to God and Man. 
 Men live on easy terms with God; and why? 
 Because aloft far in the topmost sky 
 
 He holds His sway, 
 And never comes, as men do, in their way. 
 F 
 
82 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 God. 
 
 No ! such a God my worship may not win, 
 Who lets the world about His finger spin, 
 A thing extern : my God must rule within. 
 And whom I own for Father, God, Creator, 
 Holds nature in Himself, Himself in nature ; 
 And in His kindly arms embifeced, the Whole 
 Doth live and move by His pervading soul. 
 
 The Divine Procedure. 
 
 How ? — when ? — and where ? — the gods give no reply; 
 What they will do, they do : nor heed your Why? 
 
 God — Innate Ideas. 
 
 There is a universe within. 
 The world we call the soul, the mind : 
 And in that world what best we find 
 We stammer forth, and think no sin 
 To call it God, and our God, and 
 Give heaven and earth into His hand. 
 And fear His power, and search His plan 
 Darkly, and love Him, when we can. 
 
 The Infinite. 
 
 Wouldst thou with thy bounded sight 
 Make survey of the Infinite, 
 Look right and left, and everywhere. 
 Into the finite — you'll find it there. 
 
RELIGION. 83 
 
 Toleration. 
 
 The Pater 7toster is a goodly prayer, 
 
 That helped poor sinners out of many a scrape : 
 
 And if one prays it a noster Pater, 
 
 Well, let it help him in that shape ! 
 
 Divine and Hninan. 
 
 What men would wish to have is felt below ; 
 What should be given to men is known above. 
 We teem with mighty projects ; but to lead 
 Up to the ever good and ever fair, 
 Is the gods' work ; leave to the gods their own. 
 
 Nature and Grace. 
 
 I wander here in Nature's garden fair, 
 And pick up blooms of beauty here and there, 
 And in this garden find a well of grace, 
 And old tradition that makes glad the place. 
 
 Self-knowledge and Knowledge of God. 
 
 Wouldst know thyself, and not acknowledge God ? 
 Who begins thus may end in worshipping a clod. 
 
 Religion and Morality. 
 
 Who lifts his thought to God will never sink 
 Far 'neath the level of what he dares to think. 
 
64 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 The New Birth. 
 
 Die to the old ; live to the new ; 
 Grow strong with each to-morrow : 
 Else drag with thee to life's dull end, 
 A lengthening chain of sorrow ! 
 
 Gloomy Imaginations — Despondency, 
 Death's bad enough, and black enough in faith 
 . But why paint life in funeral hues of Death ? 
 
 Im7nortality . 
 
 A rescued spirit to the goal 
 
 We bring of earth's probation ; 
 The ever-active stirring soul 
 
 Works out its own salvation. 
 And, when in love and mercy strong. 
 
 His God and Saviour meets him, 
 The angel-choir to join their throng, 
 
 With hearty welcome greets him. 
 
 Hymn of the Angels. 
 
 RAPHAEL. 
 
 The sun doth chime his ancient music, 
 'Mid brothered spheres' contending song, 
 And on his fore-appointed journey. 
 With pace of thunder rolls along. 
 
RELIGION. 8s 
 
 Strength drink the angels from his glory, 
 Though none may throughly search his way : 
 God's works rehearse their wondrous story, 
 As bright as on Creation's day. 
 
 GABRIEL. 
 
 And swift and swift beyond conceiving. 
 The pomp of earth is wheeled around. 
 Alternating Elysian brightness 
 With awful gloom of night profound. 
 Up foams the sea, a surging river, 
 And smites the steep rock's echoing base, 
 And rock and sea, unwearied ever. 
 Spin their eternal circling race. 
 
 MICHAEL. 
 
 And storm meets storm with rival greeting   
 From sea to land, from land to sea ; 
 While from their war a virtue floweth, 
 That thrills with life all things that be. 
 The lightning darts his fury, blazing 
 Before the thunder's sounding way ; 
 But still Thy servants, Lord, are praising 
 The gentle going of Thy day. 
 
 ALL THE THREE. 
 
 Strength drink the angels from Thy glory, 
 Though none may search Thy wondrous way 
 Thy works repeat their radiant story, 
 As bright as on Creation's day. 
 
86 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 The Prophet. 
 
 Not the Future alone; the Past is the reahn of the 
 
 prophet ; 
 Often, how often their Past reads like a riddle to 
 
 men ! 
 Whoso knows the Past may divine the Future : the 
 
 Present 
 Binds with a perfecting bond link unto link of the 
 
 years. 
 
 Good and Evil : their action and issue 
 {loquitur Domimcs Deus). 
 
 Of all the spirits that deny, 
 
 The clever rogue sins least against my mind. 
 For, in good sooth, the mortal generation. 
 
 When a soft pillow they may haply find. 
 Are far too apt to sink into stagnation ; 
 And therefore, man for comrade wisely gets 
 A devil, who spurs, and stimulates, and whets. 
 But you, ye sons of heaven's own choice, 
 In the one living Beautiful rejoice ! 
 The self-evolving energy divine 
 Enclasp you round with love's embrace benign. 
 And on the floating forms of earth and sky, 
 Stamp the fair type of thought that may not die ! 
 
RELIGION. 87 
 
 God in Everything. 
 
 I. 
 
 The East belongs to God ; the West 
 Gladly obeys His high behest ; 
 Tropic heat, and Arctic cold, 
 His hand in peaceful bond doth hold. 
 
 2. 
 Only God is just; He sees 
 
 What is good for each and all : 
 Call Him by what name you please, 
 
 But praise His name, both great and small. 
 
 3- 
 Life's a labyrinth, whose plan 
 Thou canst not learn from wit of man ; • 
 But make God guide in all thy ways, 
 And He will lead thee through the maze. 
 
 4. 
 
 Two graces give our breathing worth, 
 
 To draw air in, then send it forth ; 
 
 That with a power to cramp and tighten. 
 
 This' to expand us, and to lighten ; — 
 
 So wondrously our life unites 
 
 Mysterious play of opposites. 
 Then thank thou God when He confines thy way, 
 And thank Him too when He gives larger sway. 
 
88 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 The Bible. 
 
 Even as that maid of saintly grace 
 Took to herself the Saviour's face 
 In her white kerchief, so I took 
 Into my soul the holy Book, 
 And there in spite of sceptic error, 
 Gloomy doubt, and fearful terror, 
 I kept unharmed from cloudy scath 
 The pure bright image of the faith. 
 
 Bright and Brightest. 
 
 Bright is the fair maid's eye that looks on thine ; 
 Bright is the drinker's eye that greets the wine ; 
 And like the sun that robes the flowery year. 
 The sovereign's word falls on the favoured ear. 
 But brighter far than all these bright-faced things 
 Are the fair thanks thy gracious bounty brings 
 From the poor starveling, that with beaming face 
 And outspread hand receives thy kindly grace : 
 Peruse it well, that speaking face, and thou 
 Wilt ever give, as thou art giving now. 
 
 Qidet Working. 
 
 , Ask not by what gate thou entered 
 Into life, the garden of God ; 
 But in the quiet nook assigned thee, 
 Trim the beds and break the clod. 
 
RELIGION. 89 
 
 Look around thee, then, for wise men, 
 
 Look for men of high command ; 
 These will help thee with good counsel, 
 
 These will give strength to thy hand. 
 
 And when long years of faithful service 
 
 Thou hast given to the State, 
 Know that many then will love thee, 
 
 Know that none will dare to hate. 
 
 And the prince will own the loyal 
 
 Soul, that breathes through all thy ways. 
 
 Linking firmly each to-morrow 
 With long chain of yesterdays. 
 
 Charity. 
 
 Jesus, as He walked through the world. 
 
 To a fleshmarket came one day, 
 And there before the butcher's door 
 
 Right on the road a dead dog lay. 
 A crowd around the carcass stood, 
 
 As vultures gather; and one said, 
 " The stench of this abhorred hound 
 
 Sickens my brain inside my head." 
 Another said, " The grave has cast 
 
 Its refuse up for bad luck here ; " 
 And thus each in his way reproached 
 
 The poor dead brute with bitter jeer. 
 
90 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Then the Lord Jesus oped His mouth — 
 Not He with sharp reproach and spite; 
 
 But from a loving heart and true, 
 
 He said, " Like pearls his teeth are white." 
 
 They heard, and none might dare to blame ; 
 Their hearts were burning hot with shame. 
 
 Toleration. 
 
 If God to men were as severe 
 As you and I are, when we jar, 
 
 We both had scanty comfort here ; 
 But He takes men just as they are. 
 
 Stupid Piety. 
 
 If the Ass whose back did carry, 
 'Mid pomp of palms, the Son of Mary, 
 To Mecca should devoudy fare. 
 And worship with the pilgrims there. 
 He would go and back return 
 An ass — the ass that he was born ! 
 
 The Four Gospels. 
 
 Jesus came down from heaven, and brought 
 The text of the gospels in His hand, — 
 The text which God's own finger wrote, — 
 And read it to the faithful band 
 Of His disciples. The word of grace 
 Once sown in good soil grows apace. 
 
RELIGION. 91 
 
 He rose to heaven, and with him took 
 The faultless text of the sacred book ; 
 But in their hearts the truth remained, 
 And each one wrote from day to day 
 What in his memory each retained. 
 And pictured forth in his own way. 
 Well, they were men, to whom God lent 
 A diverse wit, and diverse bent, 
 And therewith we must be content : 
 We'll get no more, one thing is clear. 
 Till the last trump sounds in our ear. 
 
 Admission. 
 
 HOURI. 
 
 Here by Heaven's decree I stand, 
 
 A warder at the gate of grace ; 
 Thou wouldst come in, but strange misgiving 
 
 Stirs me when I read thy face. 
 
 Art thou faithful to the prophet? 
 
 Of our cousinship and kin ? 
 Through what sweatful struggle didst thou 
 
 Earn the right to enter in ? 
 
 Didst thou draw thy sword for Allah ? 
 
 Show thy wounds and claim reward : 
 Never yet against the faithful 
 
 Was the blissful portal barred. 
 
92 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Poet. 
 
 Why this doubting and misgiving? 
 
 I'm a man ; be this enough. 
 Life's a battle ; I have fought it 
 
 With sharp sw^ord and temper tough. 
 
 Whet thine eyes, and look within me, 
 See the v^ounds that scar this heart, 
 
 Wounds from Fortune's freakish humour. 
 Wounds from Love's delicious dart! 
 
 Yet my faith was never shaken : 
 
 I believed my love was true ; 
 Never cursed the babbling world. 
 
 Though it gave me much ado. 
 
 With a band of noble workers 
 
 I did work, and knew no rest, 
 Till my name woke love bright-flaming 
 
 From the hearts of all the best. 
 
 No, thou wilt not choose the worser; 
 
 Give thy hand, and grant me this, 
 To live, and on thy dainty fingers 
 
 Count eternities of bliss.^ 
 
 1 This poem is from the 'West-Eastern Divan,' a work in 
 which the great German pleased to identify himself with Hafiz, 
 the Persian poet. This will explain the Mohammedan character 
 of the celestial warders. 
 
POLITICS 
 
 Millst ^« bith htkt^tn, sc feag ts bxzltn ^u button ; 
 Wilt gtfa^rli^ ^as s«g, foillst gu jes foiswn, btxBnc^'^. 
 
POLITICS. 
 
 Reform, Revolution, and Conservatism. 
 
 It is true that I could be no friend to the French 
 Revolution ; for its horrors were too near me, and 
 shocked me daily and hourly, whilst its beneficial 
 results were not then to be discovered. Neither 
 could I be indifferent to the fact that the Germans 
 were endeavouring artificially to bring about such 
 scenes here, as were in France the consequence of a 
 great necessity. But I was as little a friend to arbi- 
 trary rule. Indeed I was perfectly convinced that a 
 great revolution is never a fault of the people, but of 
 the government. Revolutions are utterly impossible, 
 as long as governments are constantly just and con- 
 stantly vigilant ; so that they may anticipate them by 
 improvements at the right time, and not hold out 
 until they are forced to yield by the pressure from 
 beneath. Because I hated the Revolution, the name 
 of " the friend of the powers that be " was bestowed 
 
96 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 upon me. That is, however, a very ambiguous title, 
 which I would beg to decline. If "the powers that 
 be " were all that is excellent, good, and just, I should 
 have no objection to the title ; but, since with much 
 that is good there is also much that is bad, unjust, 
 and imperfect, a friend of "the things that are" 
 means often little less than a friend of the obsolete 
 and bad. But time is constantly progressing, and 
 human affairs wear every fifty years a different 
 aspect; so that an arrangement which, in the year 
 1800, was perfection, may, perhaps, in the year 1850, 
 be a defect. And furthermore, nothing is good for 
 a nation but that which arises from its own case and 
 its own special wants, without apish imitation of 
 another; since M^hat to one race of people, of a 
 certain age, is a wholesome nutriment, may perhaps 
 prove a poison for another. All endeavours, there- 
 fore, to introduce any foreign innovation, the necessity 
 for which is not rooted in the core of the nation 
 itself, are foolish ; and all premeditated revolutions 
 of the kind are unsuccessful, for they are without 
 God, who keeps aloof from such bungling. If, how- 
 ever, there exists an actual necessity for a great 
 reform amongst a people, God is with it, and it 
 prospers. He was visibly with Christ and His first 
 adherents ; for the appearance of the new doctrine of 
 love was a necessity to the people. He was also 
 visibly with Luther ; for the purification of the doc- 
 trine corrupted by the priests was no less a necessity. 
 
POLITICS, 97 
 
 Neither of the great powers whom I have named 
 was conservative of the state of things that then 
 existed ; much rather were both of them convinced 
 that the old leaven must be got rid of, and that it 
 would be impossible to go on and remain in the 
 untrue, unjust, and defective way. 
 
 Government. 
 
 In the government of men a great deal may be 
 done by severity, more by love, but most of all by 
 clear discernment and impartial justice which pays 
 no respect to persons. 
 
 Revolutions. 
 
 I hate every violent overthrow, because as much 
 is destroyed as is gained by it. I hate those who 
 achieve it, as well as those who give cause for it. 
 But am I therefore no friend to the public? Does 
 any right-minded man think otherwise? 
 
 You know how greatly I rejoice at every improve- 
 ment of v/hich the future gives us some prospect. 
 But, as I said, all violent transitions are revolting to 
 my mind, for they are not conformable to nature. 
 
 I am a friend to plants; I love the rose, as the 
 most perfect flower which our German soil can 
 produce ; but I am not fool enough to desire that my 
 garden should produce them now, at the end of April. 
 
 G 
 
98 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 I am satisfied if I now find the first green leaves — 
 satisfied if I see how one leaf after another is formed 
 upon the stem, from week to week; I am pleased when, 
 in May, I perceive the buds ; and I am happy when, 
 at last, in June, the rose itself appears in all its 
 splendour, and all its fragrance. If any one cannot 
 wait, let him go to the hothouses. 
 
 Aristocracy — Nobility — Pedigree — Primogeiiiticre — 
 Entail. 
 
 If the State, for a regular and fair contribution, 
 would relieve us from the feudal hocus-pocus — would 
 allow us to deal with our lands according to our 
 pleasure, so that we were not compelled to retain 
 such masses of them undivided — in that case we 
 might introduce our children to a course of vigorous 
 and free activity, instead of leaving them the poor 
 inheritance of these our limited and limiting privi- 
 leges, to enjoy which we must ever be invoking 
 the spirits of our fathers. How much happier were 
 men and women in our rank of life, if they might 
 with unforbidden eyes look round them, and elevate 
 by their selection, here a worthy maiden, there a 
 worthy youth, regarding nothing farther than their 
 own ideas of happiness in marriage ! The State 
 would have more, perhaps better citizens, and would 
 not so often be distressed for want of heads and 
 hands. 
 
POLITICS. 99 
 
 Aristocracy and Democracy. 
 
 Much is said of Aristocracy and Democracy, but 
 the whole affair is simply this : in youth, when we 
 possess nothing, or know not how to value tranquil 
 possessions, we are democrats ; but when in a long 
 life we have acquired property, we wish not only to 
 be secure of it ourselves, but also that our children 
 and grandchildren shall be secure of inheriting it, 
 and quietly enjoying it. Therefore, in old age, we 
 are always aristocrats, to whatever opinions we may 
 have been inclined in youth. 
 
 Freedom — Schiller. 
 
 Freedom is an odd thing, and every man has 
 enough of it, if he can only satisfy himself. What 
 avails a superfluity of freedom which we cannot use ? 
 Look at this chamber and the next, in which, through 
 the open door, you see my bed. Neither of them is 
 large ; and they are rendered still narrower by neces- 
 sary furniture, books, manuscripts, and works of 
 art; but they are enough for me. I have lived in 
 them all the winter, scarcely entering my front 
 rooms. What have I done with my spacious house, 
 and the liberty of going from one room to another, 
 when I have not found it requisite to make use of 
 them? 
 
 If a man has freedom enough to live healthily, and 
 work at his craft, he has enough ; and so much all 
 
lOO THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 can easily obtain. Then all of us are only free under 
 certain conditions, which we must fulfil. The citizen 
 is as free as the nobleman, when he restrains himself 
 within the limits which God appointed by placing 
 him in that rank. The nobleman is as free as the 
 prince, for, if he will but observe a few ceremonies at 
 court, he may feel himself his equal. Freedom con- 
 sists not in refusing to recognise anything above us, 
 but in respecting something which is above us; for, 
 by respecting it, we raise ourselves to it, and by our 
 very acknowledgment make manifest that we bear 
 within ourselves what is higher, and are worthy to 
 be on a level with it. 
 
 I have, on my journeys, often met merchants from 
 the north of Germany, who fancied they were my 
 equals, if they rudely seated themselves next me at 
 table. They were, by this method, nothing of the 
 kind ; but they would have been so, if they had 
 known how to value and treat me. 
 
 That this physical freedom gave Schiller so much 
 trouble in his youthful years, was caused partly by 
 the nature of his mind, but still more by the restraint 
 which he endured at the military school. In later 
 days, when he had enough physical freedom, he 
 passed over to the idea ; and I would almost say 
 that the idea killed him, since it led him to make 
 demands on his physical nature which were too 
 much for his strength. 
 
POLITICS.^ .. > , > jQ-j. 
 
 Democracy — Majorities. 
 
 Nothing is more abhorrent to a reasonable man 
 than an appeal to a majority ; for it consists of a few 
 strong men, as leaders, of knaves who temporise, of 
 the feeble who are hangers-on, and of the multitudes 
 who follow without the slightest idea of what they 
 want. 
 
 Command and Obedience, 
 
 He alone is happy who requires neither to com- 
 mand nor obey, in order to be something in the 
 world. 
 
 Weak Characters and Politics. 
 
 Weak characters are apt to make a law of their 
 weakness. A man who knew the world well said, 
 " Nothing is more difficult to contend with than 
 prudence, under which fear shields itself." Weak 
 men have often revolutionary sentiments ; they ima- 
 gine it would go well with them, if they were not 
 forced to obey a government, not knowing that they 
 must be governed, simply because they are too weak 
 to govern either themselves or others. 
 
 Civilisation. 
 
 There is something more or less wrong among us 
 old Europeans ; our relations are far too artificial 
 and complicated ; our nutriment and mode of life 
 
ib2 ' ' THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 r,ri without theii proper nature; and our social inter- 
 course is without proper love and goodwilL Every- 
 one is polished and courteous ; but no one has the 
 courage to be hearty and true, so that an honest man, 
 with natural views and feelings, stands in a very bad 
 position. Often one cannot help wishing that one 
 had been born upon one of the South Sea Islands, 
 a so-called savage, so as to have thoroughly enjoyed 
 human existence in all its purity, without any adul- 
 teration. 
 
 Government. 
 
 The world is governed by wisdom, by authority, 
 and by show. 
 
 Cotirts mid Courtiers. 
 
 Court life is like music, in which every one must 
 keep time. 
 
 Courtiers would die of ennui, if they could not fill 
 up their time with ceremonies. 
 
 Action and Reaction. 
 
 The battle between the old and the new, the per- 
 sistent and the progressive, is always the same. All 
 order is apt to stiffen into a lifeless formalism ; to get 
 rid of which, order is destroyed, and some time will 
 
POLITICS. 103 
 
 elapse before people see that order must be recalled. 
 Classicism and romanticism, monopolies of guilds 
 and freedom of crafts, accumulation and division of 
 land, — under whatever name, it is always the same 
 conflict, which, after fighting out its result in one 
 direction, in due season creates a new conflict in the 
 opposite direction. The great wisdom of govern- 
 ments would be so to regulate this conflict, that a 
 balance might be established betwixt the two op- 
 posites, creating the new without the absolute loss 
 of the old ; but this is something that seems to go 
 beyond the strength of men, and God, so far as we 
 may judge, does not seem to wish it.^ 
 
 Freedom. 
 
 The moment men obtain perfect freedom, that 
 moment they erect a stage for the manifestation 
 of their faults. The strong characters begin to go 
 wrong by excess of energy ; the weak by remissness 
 in action. 
 
 Revolutionary Times. 
 
 Oh, these are times of dread significance ! 
 Times when the low man mounts, the lofty falls, 
 
 1 This seems to be generalised from the history of the French 
 Revolution. We English flatter ourselves, sometimes, that we 
 are masters in the art of reform without revolution. But we also 
 had our Civil War, our Commonwealth, and our Restoration ; 
 and no man knows what may yet be awaiting us.— J. S. B. 
 
[04 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 As each man only in his neighbour's place 
 Could find the food to feed his vague desire, 
 Then only live a happy hour, when all 
 Distinctions vanish, and all v^e love is borne 
 In one huge stream of motley huddlement 
 Into the vast and indiscriminate swell 
 Of the wide ocean. 
 
 Ancestry and Aristocracy — Heredity. 
 
 Happy who with a bright regard looks back 
 
 Upon his father's fathers, who with joy 
 
 Recounts their deeds of grace, and in himself 
 
 Values the latest link in the fair chain 
 
 Of noble sequences ; for Nature loves 
 
 Not at one bound to achieve her topmost type. 
 
 But step by step she leads a family on 
 
 To demigod or devil, the rare joy 
 
 Or horror of the world. 
 
 Freedom. 
 
 Man was not born to say — / will be free j 
 No higher good a noble man may wish, 
 Than with a loyal heart to serve a prince 
 Whom he respects and honours. 
 
 Obedience. 
 
 A noble master all may well obey 
 
 Whose word convinces, where his will commands. 
 
POLITICS. 105 
 
 The Many. 
 
 Trust not the many : they stare at your mishap, 
 Doubt, and delay, and leave you where you were ; 
 No fair design to fruitful end may grow 
 From fancies lightly stirred, and blindly led. 
 
 The Demos. 
 
 To ol TToWol I would be civil ; 
 When things go smoothly, they do well ; 
 But, when the storm blows fierce and fell. 
 
 Then they, to exorcise the devil, 
 Bring up a host of knaves pell-mell, 
 With tyrants on their back from hell. 
 
 The French Revolutio7i. 
 
 Mad are those Frenchmen you say, those flaming 
 apostles of freedom, 
 
 Flinging the torch of revolt wildly far east and far 
 west : 
 
 Mad I agree ; but freemen ofttimes with their mad- 
 ness will mingle 
 
 Words of wisdom ; the slave, wise man or fool, must 
 be dumb ! 
 
 All apostles of freedom I hate, and hated them ever ; 
 Lawless licence they seek, each for himself in the 
 end. 
 
io6 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Wouldst thou give freedom to many, first dare to do 
 
 service to many ; 
 Dangerous daring ! and yet this you may learn, if 
 
 you try ! 
 
 France and her caldron of troubles, the great of the 
 
 earth may consider ; 
 More than the great the small v^^isely the lesson may 
 
 read. 
 Nemesis seized the few; but who will deliver the 
 
 many 
 From the many, when they brook many tyrants for 
 
 one? 
 
LITERATURE— POETRY 
 
 Win^ matl^l bin ^irljter ? — (gin bolltn, gan^ ban tintx tbhn 
 
LITERATURE— POETRY. 
 
 Poetry and Popular Life : The Greeks — Buj-ns. 
 
 We admire the Tragedies of the ancient Greeks; 
 but to take a correct view of the case, we ought 
 to admire the period and the nation in which their 
 production was possible rather than the individual 
 authors ; for though these pieces differ in some 
 points from each other, and though one of these 
 poets appears somewhat greater and more finished 
 than the other, still, taking all things together, only 
 one decided character runs through the whole. 
 
 This is the character of grandeur, fitness, sound- 
 ness, human perfection, elevated wisdom, sublime 
 thought, pure strong intuition, and whatever other 
 qualities one might enumerate. But when we find 
 all these qualities, not only in the dramatic works 
 which have come down to us, but also in lyrical and 
 epic works — in the philosophers, orators, and his- 
 torians, and in an equally high degree in the works 
 of plastic art that have come down to us — we must 
 
no THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 feel convinced that such qualities did not merely 
 belong to individuals, but v^ere the current property 
 of the nation and the v^hole period. 
 
 Now, take up Burns. How is he great, except 
 through the circumstance that the whole songs of his 
 predecessors lived in the mouth of the people, — that 
 they were, so to speak, sung at his cradle ; that, as a 
 boy, he grew up amongst them ; and the high excel- 
 lence of these models so pervaded him that he had 
 therein a living basis on which he could proceed 
 further ? Again, why is he great, but from this, that 
 his own songs at once found susceptible ears amongst 
 his compatriots ; that, sung by reapers and sheaf- 
 binders, they at once greeted him in the field ; and 
 that his boon - companions sang them to welcome 
 him at the ale-house? 
 
 Novelty. 
 
 Poetry operates most strongly in the beginning 
 of new social conditions — it may be when the people 
 is quite crude, half cultivated, or in the transition 
 from one stage of social culture to another, or on 
 the discovery of a foreign culture'; but in all these 
 cases NOVELTY acts as the most potent stimulus in 
 producing the result.^ 
 
 1 It may be worth while noticing that in the few books on taste 
 published in the last century, it was a common thing to place 
 novelty in the van, as if this were the most important principle to 
 be considered in an aesthetical treatise. This was to confound 
 
LITERATURE-POETRY. iii 
 
 The Novel and the Drama. 
 
 In the novel as well as in the drama, it is human 
 nature and human action that we see. The differ- 
 ence between these casts of fiction lies not merely in 
 their outward form — not merely in the circumstance 
 that the personages of the one are made to speak, 
 whilst those of the other have commonly their history 
 narrated. Unfortunately, many dramas are but 
 novels, which proceed by dialogue, and it would not 
 be impossible to write a drama in the shape of letters. 
 But in the novel it is chiefly sentiments and events 
 that are exhibited ; in the drama it is characters and 
 deeds. The novel must go slowly forward, and the 
 sentiments of the hero, by some means or another, 
 must restrain the tendency of the whole to unfold 
 itself and to conclude. The drama, on the other 
 hand, must hasten, and the character of the hero 
 must press forward to the end ; it does not restrain 
 but is restrained. The novel hero must be suffering 
 — at least he must not be in a high degree active ; in 
 the dramatic hero we look for activity and deeds. 
 Grandison, Clarissa, Pamela, the Vicar of Wakefield, 
 Tom Jones himself, were, if not suffering, at least 
 retarding personages. And the incidents are all, in 
 some sort, modelled by their sentiments. In the 
 
 an external exciting occasion with an inward plastic cause, in a 
 manner not at all creditable to the philosophical endowment 
 of the century. — J. S. B. 
 
112 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 drama the hero models nothing by himself; all things 
 withstand him, and he clears and casts away the 
 hindrances from off his path, or else sinks under 
 them. 
 
 In the novel some degree of scope may be allowed 
 to chance, but it must always be led and guided 
 by the sentiments of the personages; on the other 
 hand, Fate, which by means of connected circum- 
 stances carries forward men without their own con- 
 currence to an unforeseen catastrophe, can have place 
 only in the drama ; Chance may produce pathetic 
 situations, but never tragic ones. Fate, on the 
 other hand, ought always to be terrible, and is in 
 the highest sense tragic, when it brings into a close 
 concatenation the guilty man and the guiltless con- 
 founded in one sweeping doom. 
 
 Milton. 
 
 The other day (1799) I happened to take up Mil- 
 ton's 'Paradise Lost,' which threw me into strange 
 contemplations. In this, as in all other productions 
 of modern art, it is the personality of the artist that 
 gives interest to his work. The subject is detest- 
 able {abscheuUch) ; externally not without a certain 
 imposing grandeur, but internally worm-eaten and 
 hollow. The springs of action, and the situations 
 that belong to them — die motiven — are in some few 
 cases natural and effective ; but the majority are lame 
 
LIT ERA TURE—POE TRY. 113 
 
 and false, and give one pain to realise. At the same 
 time, it is an interesting man who speaks to us : 
 character, feeling, understanding, learning, poetical 
 and oratorical genius, and other excellent qualities, 
 he undoubtedly possesses in no common measure. 
 Nay, more ; the singular accident that as a revolu- 
 tionary politician he paints the devil with more effec- 
 tive touches than the angels, has a great influence on 
 the design and composition of the poem ; and again, 
 the accident of the writer being blind, adds not a little 
 to the tone and colour of the book. ' Paradise Lost,' 
 therefore, notwithstanding its radical defects as a 
 work of art, will maintain its place triumphantly in 
 virtue of the majestic personality {Natiir) which it 
 reveals. 
 
 Books. 
 
 Properly speaking, we learn from those books only 
 that we cannot judge. The author of a book that 
 I am competent to criticise would have to learn from 
 me. 
 
 Excellence and Mediocrity. 
 
 All great excellence in life or art, at its first recog- 
 nition, brings with it a certain pain arising from the 
 strongly felt inferiority of the spectator.; only at a 
 later period, when we take it into our own culture, and 
 appropriate as much of it as our capacities allow, we 
 learn to love and to esteem it. Mediocrity on the 
 H 
 
114 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Other hand may often give us unqualified pleasure ; it 
 does not disturb our self-satisfaction, but rather en- 
 courages us with the thought that we are as good 
 as another. 
 
 Books. 
 
 Books also have their strange living experiences. 
 
 Who neer his bread with weeping ate, 
 And through nighfs sorrow-laden hours, 
 Weeping on bed of languor sate, 
 He knows you not, ye heavenly Powers ! ^ 
 
 These deeply pathetic lines were frequently repeated 
 by a noble and much-revered queen in her banish- 
 ment. She formed acquaintance with the book in 
 which the lines occur — a book in which not a few 
 other sorrowful experiences are recorded — and drew 
 from the perusal a painful consolation. Influences 
 of this kind may proceed even from inferior books, 
 and give a pulsation of good continued through eter- 
 nity ; and who could grudge or seek to curtail good 
 results of this nature ? 
 
 Advice to Yoicng Poets. 
 
 Let the young poet give utterance only to what 
 lives, and lives not for the moment, let its form be 
 
 1 Well-known lines from ' Wilhelm Meister : ' the royal lady 
 alluded to is the Louise, Queen of Prussia, whom Napoleon 
 treated so rudely.— J. S. B. 
 
LIT ERA TURE—POE TRY. 1 15 
 
 what it will ; above all, let him have nothing to do 
 with anything in the shape of ill-humour or con- 
 tradiction or negation ; from saying No, however 
 cleverly, no good can come. 
 
 It is of great consequence to grow in rhythmical 
 dexterity and execution, but all this will be of no 
 avail, if a constant eye be not kept on the solidity and 
 substantiality of the contents. Now poetical contents, 
 or what the wine merchants call body, mean always 
 fundamentally the .contents of the author's own life 
 which nobody can give us, and nobody can take from 
 us. Happily in the present day all products of mere 
 vanity and self-display, with no root, meet with less 
 favour than ever. 
 
 I cannot prescribe any form to be followed — you 
 must make your own form ; only in the case of every 
 poem, ask if it contains a real experience, and if it be 
 an experience by which your own higher life has been 
 benefited. You are not benefited, for instance, when 
 you go on continually lamenting for some loved one 
 that you have lost through distance, infidelity, or 
 death. However cleverly you put forth wailings of 
 this sort, you are nothing the better for it. Keep 
 yourselves always in the forward march of life, and 
 free yourself as you go along. 
 
 Poetry and Misanthropy. 
 
 A well-known German poet had lately passed 
 through Weimar, and shown Goethe his album. You 
 
ii6 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 cannot imagine, said Goethe, what stuff it contains. 
 All the poets write as if they were ill, and the whole 
 world were a lazaretto. They all speak of the woe 
 and the misery of this earth, and of the joys of a 
 hereafter ; all are discontented, and one draws the 
 other into a state of still greater discontent. This is 
 a real abuse of poetry, which was given to us to 
 hide the little discords of life, and to make man 
 contented with the world and his condition. But 
 the present generation is afraid of all such strength, 
 and only feels poetical when it has weakness to deal 
 with. 
 
 I have hit on a good word to tease these gentlemen. 
 I will call their poetry " Lazaretto-poetry ; " and I 
 will give the name of" Tyrtaean-poetry " to that which 
 not only sings war-songs, but also arms men with 
 courage to undergo the conflicts of life. 
 
 Our Young Poets. 
 
 The majority of our young poets have no fault but 
 this, that their subjectivity is not important, and that 
 they cannot find matter in the objective. At best they 
 only find a material which is similar to themselves, 
 which corresponds to their own subjectivity ; but as 
 for taking the material on its own account, when it is 
 repugnant to their subjectivity, merely because it is 
 poetical, such a thing is never thought of. 
 
LIT ERA TURE—POE TRY. 117 
 
 Poetry J Subjective and Objective. 
 
 The province of the poet is representation. Rep- 
 resentation becomes more perfect the more closely 
 it vies with nature, when the pictures through the 
 genius of the poet are so vivid that they work on mind 
 with all the force of realities. Poetry is at its zenith 
 when it seems altogether external ; the more it deals 
 with the personal feeling of the writer, the more it is 
 on the downward path. That poetry which describes 
 only the feelings of the writer, without giving them 
 an outward body, and on the other hand that which 
 gives the objective, without breathing a soul of sen- 
 timent through it, are both on the lowest step from 
 which poetry goes down into the prose of common 
 
 life. 
 
 Criticism. 
 
 I am more and more convinced that, whenever one 
 has to vent an opinion on the actions or on the writ- 
 ings of others, unless this be done from a certain one- 
 sided enthusiasm, or from a loving interest in the per- 
 son and the work, the result is hardly worth'^gather- 
 ing up. Sympathy and enjoyment in what we see is 
 in fact the only reality, and from such reality, reality 
 as a natural product follows. All else is vanity. 
 
 Lyrical Poetry. 
 
 All good lyrics must be reasonable as a whole, and 
 yet in details a little unreasonable. 
 
ii8 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 The Moral and the Beautiful — Sophocles. 
 
 How came the moral element into the world? 
 Through God Himself, like everything else. It is no 
 product of human reflection, but a beauty of nature 
 inherent and inborn. It is, more or less, the dower 
 of mankind generally, but existed to a high degree in 
 a few eminently gifted minds. These have, by great 
 deeds or doctrines, manifested its divine nature ; 
 which, then, by the beauty of its appearance, won the 
 love of men, and powerfully attracted them to rever- 
 ence and emulation. 
 
 Alongside of this contagion from superior natures, 
 a consciousness of the worth of the morally beautiful 
 and good could be attained by experience, inasmuch 
 as the bad showed itself in its consequences as a 
 destroyer of happiness, both in individuals and the 
 whole body, while the noble and right seemed to pro- 
 duce and secure the happiness of one and all. Thus 
 the morally beautiful could become a doctrine, and 
 diffuse itself over whole nations as a sort of code 
 formally enunciated. 
 
 It has been stated by some writers that the Greek 
 tragedy made moral beauty a special object; but 
 it was not so much morality as pure humanity in its 
 whole extent, especially in positions where, by fall- 
 ing into contact with rude power, it could assume 
 a tragic character. In this region, indeed, the moral 
 element stood as the principal factor of human nature. 
 
LIT ERA TURE—POE TRY. 119 
 
 The morality of Antigone, besides, was not invented 
 by Sophocles, but was contained in the subject, which 
 Sophocles chose the more readily, as it united so much 
 dramatic effect with moral beauty. 
 
 Poetry and History. 
 
 Manzoni wants nothing except to know what a good 
 poet he is, and what rights belong to him as such. 
 He has too much respect for history, and on this ac- 
 count is always adding notes to his pieces, in which 
 he shows how faithful he has been to detail. Now, 
 though his facts may be historical, his characters are 
 not so, any more than my Thoas and Iphigenia. No 
 poet has ever known the historical characters which 
 he has painted ; if he had, he could scarcely have 
 made use of them. The poet must know what effects 
 he wishes to produce, and regulate the nature of his 
 characters accordingly. If I had tried to make 
 Egmont as history represents him, the father of a 
 dozen children, his light-minded proceedings would 
 have appeared very absurd. I needed an Egmont 
 more in harmony with his own actions and my poetic 
 views ; and this is, as Clara says, my Egmont. 
 
 What would be the use of poets, if they only re- 
 peated the record of the historian ? The poet must go 
 further, and give us, if possible, something higher 
 and better. All the characters of Sophocles bear 
 something of that poet's lofty soul ; and it is the 
 same with the characters of Shakespeare. This is 
 
I20 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 as it ought to be. Nay, Shakespeare goes further, and 
 makes his Romans Englishmen ; and there too he is 
 right, for otherwise his nation would not have under- 
 stood him. 
 
 Poetry. 
 
 What makes poetry ? A full heart, brimful of one 
 noble passion. 
 
 Scott. 
 
 You find everywhere in Scott a remarkable security 
 and thoroughness in his delineation, which proceeds 
 from his comprehensive knowledge of the real world, 
 obtained by life-long studies and observations, and 
 a daily discussion of the most important relations. 
 Then come his great talent and his comprehensive 
 nature. You remember the English critic, who com- 
 pares the poets to the voices of male singers, of which 
 some can command only a few fine tones, while others 
 have the whole compass, from the highest to the 
 lowest, completely in their power. Scott is one of 
 this last sort. In the ' Fair Maid of Perth,' you will 
 not find a single weak passage to make you feel as if 
 his knowledge and talent were insufficient. He is 
 equal to his subject in every direction in which it 
 takes him; the king, the royal brother, the prince, 
 the head of the clergy, the nobles, the magistracy, 
 the citizens and mechanics, the Highlanders, are all 
 
LIT ERA TURE—POE TR Y. 121 
 
 drawn with the same sure hand, and hit off with 
 equal truth. 
 
 The Idea in Poetry — Faust. 
 
 My countrymen, who have a peculiar rage for the 
 idea in all things, are continually asking me what 
 idea I meant to embody in my Faust? as if I knew 
 myself, and could inform them. Froiti heaven, 
 through the world, to hell, would indeed be some- 
 thing; but this is no idea, only a course of action. 
 And further, that the devil loses the wager, and that 
 a man, continually struggling from degrading error 
 towards something better, should be redeemed, is an 
 effective, and to many a good and elevating thought; 
 but it is no idea which lies at the foundation of the 
 whole, and of every individual scene. It would have 
 been a fine thing indeed if I had strung so rich, 
 varied, and highly diversified a life as I have brought 
 to view in Faust upon the slender string of one per- 
 vading idea ! 
 
 It was, in short, not in my line as a poet to strive 
 to embody anything absj:ract. I received into my 
 soul certain impressions, vivid, varied, and pleas- 
 ant, just as a lively imagination presented them; 
 and I had as a poet nothing more to do than artisti- 
 cally to round off and elaborate such views and im- 
 pressions, and by means of a lively representation so 
 to bring them forward that others might be impressed 
 in a like way. 
 
122 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Byron. 
 
 With that disposition which always leads him into 
 the illimitable, the restraint which he imposed upon 
 himself by the observance of the three unities be- 
 com.es him very well. If he had but known how to 
 endure moral restraints also ! That he could not do 
 this was his ruin ; and it may be aptly said, that he 
 was destroyed by his own unbridled temperament. 
 
 But he was too much in the dark about himself. 
 He lived impetuously for the day, and neither knew 
 nor thought what he was doing. Permitting every- 
 thing to himself, and excusing nothing in others, he 
 necessarily put himself in a bad position, and made 
 the world his foe. At the very beginning, he 
 offended the most distinguished literary men by his 
 "^English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." To be per- 
 mitted only to live after this, he was obliged to go 
 back a step. In his succeeding works he continued 
 in the path of opposition and fault-finding. Church 
 and State were not left unassailed. This reckless 
 conduct drove him from England, and would in time 
 have driven him from Europe also. Everywhere 
 things were too narrow for him, and with the most 
 perfect personal freedom he felt himself confined; this 
 world seemed to him a prison. His Grecian expedi- 
 tion was the result of no voluntary resolution ; his 
 misunderstanding with the world drove' him to it. 
 
 The renunciation of what was hereditary and patri- 
 
LIT ERA TURE—POE TR Y. 1 23 
 
 Otic not only caused the personal destruction of so 
 distinguished a man, but his revolutionary turn, and 
 the constant mental agitation with which it was com- 
 bined, did not allow his talent a fair development. 
 Moreover, his perpetual negation and fault-finding is 
 injurious even to his excellent works. For not only 
 does the discontent of the poet infect the reader, but 
 the end of all opposition is negation ; and negation 
 is nothing. If I call dad bad, what do I gain ? but 
 if I ca.\l £-ood bad, I do a great deal of mischief. He 
 who will work aright must, never rail, must not 
 trouble himself at all about what is ill done, but only 
 do well himself; for the great point is not to pull 
 down, but to build up, and in this humanity finds 
 pure joy. Lord Byron is to be regarded as a man, 
 as an Englishman, as a peer, and as a great talent. 
 His good qualities belong chiefly to the man ; his 
 bad to the Englishman and the peer ; his talent is 
 incommensurable. 
 
 All Englishmen are, as such, without reflection, 
 properly so called. Distractions of various kinds 
 and party spirit will not allow their thoughts to ripen 
 in quiet. But they are great as practical men. 
 
 Thus Lord Byron could never attain to wise reflec- 
 tion on himself or on the world. But where he cre- 
 ates he always succeeds ; and we may truly say that 
 with him inspiration supplies the place of reflection. 
 He was always obliged to go on poetising ; and then 
 everything that came from him, especially from his 
 
124 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 heart, was excellent. He produced his best things, 
 as women do pretty children, without thinking about 
 it or knowing how it was done. 
 
 He is a great talent, a born talent ; and I never saw 
 the true poetical power greater in any man than in 
 him. In the apprehension of external objects, and a 
 clear penetration into past situations, he is quite as 
 great as Shakespeare. But as a pure individual, 
 Shakespeare is his superior. This was felt by Byron, 
 and on this account he does not say much of Shake- 
 speare, although he knows whole passages by heart. 
 He would willingly have denied him altogether ; for 
 Shakespeare's cheerfulness is in his way, and he feels 
 that he is no match for it. Pope he does not deny, 
 for he had no cause to fear him. On the contrary, he 
 mentions him, and shows him respect when he can ; 
 for he knows well enough that Pope is a mere foil to 
 himself. His high rank as an English peer was very 
 injurious to Byron ; for every talent is oppressed by 
 the outer world ; how much more, then, when there 
 is such high birth and so great a fortune } A certain 
 middle rank is much more favourable to talent, on 
 which account we find all great artists and poets in 
 the middle classes. Byron's predilection for the 
 unbounded could not have been nearly so dangerous 
 with more humble birth and smaller means. But as 
 it was, he was able to put every fancy into practice, 
 and this involved him in innumerable scrapes. Be- 
 sides, how could one of such high rank be inspired 
 
LITERATURE— POETRY. 125 
 
 with awe and respect by any rank whatever? He 
 spoke out whatever he felt, and this brought him into 
 ceaseless conflict with the world. 
 
 If Lord Byron had had an opportunity of working 
 off all the opposition in his character by a number of 
 strong parliamentary speeches, he would have been 
 much more pure as a poet. But as he hardly ever 
 spoke in Parliament, he kept within himself all his 
 feelings against his patrons ; and to free himself from 
 them, he had no other means than to express them 
 in poetical form. I could therefore call a great part 
 of Byron's poetry works of negation, speeches that 
 should have been delivered in Parliament ; and to 
 place them under this rubric would rather add to 
 than take from their reputation. 
 
 The Poefs Fimction — Elective Affinities. 
 
 The very simple text, of which my novel, ' The 
 Elective Affinities,' is a paraphrase, reads thus : 
 (Matt. V. 28) — Whosoever looks on a woniaji to lust 
 after her has committed adultery with her already in 
 his heart. Whether any one, among its numerous 
 readers and critics, has ever recognised this text 
 behind the paraphrase I cannot tell. The public 
 never can be made to understand that the true poet 
 is only a masked father confessor, whose special 
 function is to exhibit what is dangerous in sentiment 
 and pernicious in action, by a vivid picture of their 
 
126 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 consequences. Before the moral significance of a 
 true work of art can be generally apprehended, a 
 much higher degree of culture on the part of the 
 public must be attained. To understand this sort of 
 confession, in fact, the reader must have been trained 
 to play the part of father confessor to himself. 
 
 Advice to Yottng Poets. 
 
 Have a care of devoting yourself to a great work. 
 The itch of producing an opus magmim has ruined, 
 and ruins, many of our finest poetical talents. I have 
 suffered somewhat from this disease myself. How 
 many gems of thought have fallen into the well while 
 I was vainly planning some fancied monumetitum 
 are perennius ! Had I written all that the favour- 
 able spirit moved me to write, no hundred volumes 
 would have been space for it. 
 
 The present moment will have its rights ; the 
 thoughts and feelings that daily crowd round the 
 mind of a true poet are entitled to an expression 
 as free as is their visiting. But, with a great work 
 in gestation, nothing else can be attended to ; all 
 thoughts, however good, are rejected, that do not 
 bear upon that one object; the comfortable enjoy- 
 ment of life is for a time suspended. How much 
 intellectual strength must we not put forth, merely 
 to lay out and round off the plan of a great whole ; 
 and when this is done, how seldom do we find the 
 favourable moment in which power of thought unites 
 
LIT ERA TURE—POE TR Y. 1 27 
 
 with quiet of mind to produce a full, unbroken stream 
 of poetic expression ! Very often the poet finds, after 
 years of thought and labour, that he has mistaken 
 himself in his whole subject, and then his work is 
 altogether useless ; or perhaps, though successful in 
 some parts, where the materials are so extensive, he 
 fails in others ; and in this case his work wants com- 
 pleteness as a whole, and the good suffers owing to 
 its conjunction with the bad. The labour and sacri- 
 fice of half a lifetime may thus produce nothing but 
 discomfort and mortification. If, on the other hand, 
 the poet takes hold of the present as it offers itself, he 
 cannot fail to breathe through his handiwork some of 
 the freshness of reality, and snatch some fugitive trait 
 of nature ; or should he be so unfortunate as to please 
 neither himself nor his friends, why, then, he may 
 throw the blotted paper into the fire to-day, and write 
 upon parchment to-morrow. 
 
 Be faithful in little, but let that little be fresh and 
 true, and no day will pass without its balsam of 
 poetic enjoyment. Do not consider yourself too high 
 even for the Annuals or the Magazines, but always 
 follow your own plan, and write to, not/or, the public. 
 
 The world is so great and so rich, and life is so 
 manifold, that there will be no want of suitable occa- 
 sions for poems. But your little pieces must be in 
 the true sense of the word Gelegenheits-gedichte, — 
 they must arise from, and have reference to, an actual 
 occasion of life, — reality must afford both the origina- 
 
128 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 tion of their existence and the materials out of which 
 they are moulded. A special case requires nothing 
 but the treatment of a poet to become universal and 
 poetical. All my poems are Gelegenheits-gedichte j 
 they were all motived by, and have all their root and 
 base in, reality. Of poems that are conjured out of 
 the air I make no account. 
 
 Let me not be told that the actual world is desti- 
 tute of a poetic interest. It is the great triumph of 
 genius to make the common appear novel by opening 
 our eyes to its beauty. Reality gives the motive, the 
 hinging points, the kernel ; but to create a beautiful 
 living whole out of these rough materials, that is the 
 work of the poet. 
 
 Kotzebue. 
 
 What has lasted for twenty years, and still pre- 
 serves its popularity, cannot be destitute of something 
 substantially good. When he remained in his own 
 proper sphere, and did not venture beyond his depth, 
 Kotzebue always produced something good. He 
 and Chodowiecki were of kindred genius ; both were 
 masters in painting characters and scenes of every- 
 day life ; but when they meddled with the Greeks 
 and the Romans, they made themselves and their 
 heroes ridiculous. You have mentioned his Ver- 
 wandschaften and his Versohnnng j the Klingsberge 
 is my favourite piece. Whatever may be said against 
 
LIT ERA TURE—POE TR Y. 129 
 
 Kotzebue, one thing cannot be denied — he walked 
 through life with his eyes open. 
 
 Poetry as Individualism. 
 
 The really high and difficult part of art is the 
 apprehension of what is individual — characteristic. 
 The young poet must do some sort of violence to 
 himself to get out of the mere general idea. No 
 doubt this is difficult ; but it is the very life of art. 
 Besides, when you content yourself with generalities, 
 any one can imitate you ; but in the particular, no 
 one can. And why.^ Because no others have ex- 
 perienced exactly the same thing. And you need not 
 fear lest what is peculiar should not meet with sym- 
 pathy. Each character, however peculiar it may be, 
 and each object which you can represent from the 
 stone up to man, has generality ; for there is repeti- 
 tion everywhere, and there is nothing to be found only 
 once in the world. 
 
 Poetry and Philosophy — Schiller. 
 
 I have a peculiar feeling towards Schiller. Some 
 scenes of his great drama I read with peculiar love 
 and admiration ; but presently I meet with something 
 which violates the truth of nature, and I can go no 
 further. I feel this even in reading " Wallenstein." 
 I cannot but think that Schiller's turn for philosophy 
 injured his poetry, because it led him to consider 
 I 
 
I30 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 speculation far higher than all nature — indeed thus to 
 annihilate nature. What he could conceive must 
 happen, whether in conformity with nature or not. 
 
 The Theatre. 
 
 The theatre has often been at variance with the 
 pulpit; they ought not, I think, to quarrel. How 
 much is it to be wished that in both, the celebration 
 of Nature and of God were intrusted to none but 
 men of noble minds ! 
 
 The Theatre and the State. 
 
 How useful might the theatre be made to all 
 ranks ! What advantage even the State might pro- 
 cure from it, if the occupations, trades, and under- 
 takings of men were brought upon the stage, and 
 presented on their praiseworthy side,, in that point of 
 view from which the State itself would honour and 
 protect them ! As matters stand, we exhibit only the 
 ridiculous side of men. The comic poet is but a 
 spiteful tax-gatherer, who keeps a watchful eye over 
 the errors of his fellow-subjects, and seems gratified 
 when he can fix any charge upon them. Might it 
 not be a worthy and pleasing task for a statesman to 
 survey the natural and reciprocal influences of all 
 classes on each other, and to find some poet gifted 
 with sufficient humour, to represent these worthily .? 
 
LIT ERA TURE—POE TR V. 13 1 
 
 In this way, I am persuaded, many very entertaining, 
 both agreeable and useful pieces, might be executed. 
 But so far as I, in wandering about the world, 
 have been able to observe, statesmen are accustomed 
 merely to forbid, to hinder, to refuse; but very rarely 
 to invite, to further, to reward. They let all things 
 go along, till some mischief happen ; then they get 
 into a fume, and lay about them. 
 
 Theatrical Enjoyment. 
 
 Any one who is sufficiently young, and who is not 
 quite spoiled, could not easily find any place that 
 would suit him so well as a theatre. No one asks 
 you any questions ; you need not open your mouth 
 unless you choose ; on the contrary, you sit quite at 
 your ease like a king, letting everything pass before 
 you, and recreating your mind and senses to your 
 heart's content. There is poetry, there is painting, 
 there are singing and music, there is acting, — and 
 what not besides. When all these arts, and the 
 charm of youth and beauty heightened to an import- 
 ant degree, work in concert on the same evening, it is 
 a bouquet with which no other can compare. But 
 even when part is bad and part is good, it is still 
 better than looking out of a window, or playing a 
 game at whist in a close room amid the smoke of 
 cigars. 
 
132 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Actors. 
 I pardon in the player every fault that springs from 
 self-deception and the wish to please. If he seems 
 not something to himself and others, he is nothing. 
 To seem is his vocation ; he must prize his moment- 
 ary approbation highly, for he gets no other recom- 
 pense. He must try to glitter ; he is there to do so. 
 
 Criticism — Shakespeare. 
 
 Many of the u^onders of Shakespeare's genius are 
 due to the powerfully productive atmosphere of his 
 age and time. It is with Shakespeare as with the 
 mountains of Switzerland. Transplant Mont Blanc at 
 once into the large plain of the Luneburg Heath, and 
 we should find no words to express our wonder at its 
 magnitude. Seek it, however, in its gigantic home — 
 go to it over its immense neighbours, the Jungfrau, 
 the Finsteraarhorn, the Eiger, the Wetterhorn, St 
 Gothard, and Monte Rosa ; Mont Blanc will, indeed, 
 still remain a giant, but it will no longer produce 
 such amazement in the spectator. 
 
 Besides, let him who will not believe that much of 
 Shakespeare's greatness appertains to his age, only 
 ask himself the question, whether a phenomenon so 
 astounding would be possible in the present England 
 of 1824, in these evil days of criticising and hair- 
 splitting journals. 
 
 That undisturbed, innocent, somnambulatory pro- 
 
. LITERATURE—POETRY. 133 
 
 duction, by which alone anything great can thrive, is 
 no longer possible. Our talents at present lie before 
 the public. The daily criticisms which appear in fifty 
 different places, and the gossip that is caused by 
 them amongst the public, prevent the appearance of 
 any sound production. In the present day, he who 
 does not keep aloof from all this, and isolate himself 
 by main force, is lost. Through the bad, chiefly 
 negative, sesthetical and critical tone of the journals, 
 a sort of half culture finds its way into the masses ; 
 but to productive talent it is a noxious mist, a drop- 
 ping poison, which destroys the tree of creative power, 
 from the ornamental green leaves to the deepest pith 
 and the most hidden fibres. 
 
 And then how tame and weak has life itself be- 
 come during the last two shabby centuries ! Where 
 do we now meet an original- character, and where is 
 the man who has the strength to be true, and to show 
 himself as he is? This specially affects the poet, 
 leading him to quarry his own mind resolutely, in 
 order to find some compensation for the featureless 
 tameness of the outer world. 
 
 Originality. 
 
 People are always talking about originality ; but 
 what do they mean ? As soon as we are born, the 
 world begins to work upon us, and this goes on to 
 the end. And after all, what can we call our own 
 except energy, strength, and will? If I could give 
 
134 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 an account of all that I owe to great predecessors 
 and contemporaries, there would be but a small bal- 
 ance in my favour. 
 
 However, the time of life in which we are sub- 
 jected to a new and important personal influence is 
 by no means a matter of indifference. That Lessing, 
 Winckelmann, and Kant were older than I, and that 
 the first two acted upon my youth, the latter on my 
 advanced age, — this circumstance was for me very im- 
 portant. Again, that Schiller was so much younger 
 than I, and engaged in his freshest strivings just as 
 I began to be weary of the world, — ^just, too, as the 
 brothers Von Humboldt and Schlegel were beginning 
 their career under my eye, — was of the greatest im- 
 portance ; and I derived from it unspeakable advan- 
 tages. 
 
 Carlyle. 
 
 It is admirable in Carlyle, that in his judgment of 
 our German authors he has especially in view the 
 mental and moral core, as that which is really influ- 
 ential. Carlyle is a moral force of great importance. 
 There is in him much for the future ; and we cannot 
 foresee what he will produce and effect. 
 
 Criticism. 
 
 No person can form a judgment of history who has 
 not lived through history. So it is with whole nations. 
 
LIT ERA TURE—POE TR Y. 135 
 
 The Germans learned first to form a judgment on 
 literary matters, when they had a literature of their 
 own. 
 
 Literature — Over-production . 
 
 I cannot but look upon it as one of the greatest 
 misfortunes of our age, that it allows nothing to 
 ripen quietly ; that the next moment, so to speak, 
 devours the preceding; that no time is allowed for 
 digestion ; and that we live from hand to mouth, with- 
 out leisure to bring forth any finished product. Have 
 we not reviews and magazines for every hour of the 
 day? By this portentous machinery, everything that 
 a man does or writes, or intends to do or write, is 
 forthwith dragged before the public. No man dare 
 do anything, enjoy or suffer anything, save for the 
 delectation of others; and thus every trifle goes from 
 house to house, from town to town, from kingdom to 
 kingdom, from one quarter of the world to another, at 
 a galloping speed. 
 
 As in the mechanical world one cannot stop the 
 progress of steam and machinery, so also in the 
 domain of morals : the liveliness of commerce, the 
 facilities of paper money, the making of debts to pay 
 debts, these are the overwhelming forces with which 
 a young man in the present day has to contend. Well 
 for him if nature has gifted him with a moderate, 
 cool, quiet temper, so that he may neither make im- 
 
136 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 moderate demands on the world nor suffer himself to 
 be moved by it. 
 
   Public Speaking. 
 
 To Rhetoric are given all the faculties of poetry 
 and all its privileges ; she seizes on them and abuses 
 them, that she may gain certain superficial moral or 
 perhaps immoral advantages in political life. 
 
 Popular So7igs and Ballads. 
 
 The special value of what we call National Songs 
 or Ballads is, that their inspiration comes fresh from 
 nature. They are never got up ; they flow from a 
 sure spring. The poet of a literary age might avail 
 himself of this advantage if he only knew how. 
 There is always one thing, however, in which the 
 former assert their advantage. The unsophisticated 
 man is more the master of direct effective expression 
 in few words than he who has received a regular 
 literary training. 
 
 Literature — Style. 
 On the whole, philosophical speculation is injuri- 
 ous to the Germans, as it tends to make their style 
 vague, difficult, and obscure. The stronger their 
 attachment to certain philosophical schools, the 
 worse they write. Those Germans who, as men of 
 business and actual life, confine themselves to the 
 
LIT ERA TURE- POE TR Y. 137 
 
 practical, write the best. Schiller's style is most 
 noble and impressive when he leaves off philoso- 
 phising, as I observe every day in his highly inter- 
 esting letters, with which I am now busy. 
 
 There are likewise among the German women 
 genial creatures who write a really excellent style, 
 and, indeed, in that respect surpass many of our 
 celebrated male writers. The English almost always 
 write well — being born orators and practical men, 
 with a tendency to the real. 
 
 The French, in their style, remain true to their 
 general character. They are of a social nature, and 
 therefore never forget the public whom they address: 
 they strive to be clear, that they may convince their 
 reader, — agreeable, that they may please him. 
 
 Altogether, the style of a writer is a faithful repre- 
 sentative of his mind ; therefore, if any man wishes 
 to write a clear style, let him first be clear in his 
 thoughts ; and, if any would write in a noble style, 
 let him first possess a noble soul, and live a noble life. 
 
 Prose. 
 
 Very few of our recent young poets write good 
 prose. This is very easily explained. To write prose 
 one must have something to say; but he who has 
 nothing to say can still twirl verses and find rhymes, 
 where one word suggests the other, and at last some- 
 thing comes out, which in fact is nothing, but which 
 looks as if it were something. 
 
138 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Prose and Poetry. 
 
 If imagination did not originate things which must 
 ever remain problems to the understanding, there 
 would be but little for the imagination to do. It is 
 this which separates poetry from prose j in which 
 latter understanding always is, and always should be, 
 dominant. 
 
 Language — Style. 
 
 It is not language in itself and independently which 
 is accurate, vigorous, lucid, or graceful, but the spirit 
 which is embodied in it ; and so it is not in every one's 
 power to give to his opinions, speeches, or poems, 
 the good qualities of expression that ought to belong 
 to them. The question is, whether nature has given 
 the writer or speaker intellectual and moral qualities 
 that demand and shape out for themselves such an 
 embodiment — intellectual powers of intuition and 
 penetration ; and not less moral power, that he may 
 be able to resist the evil demons who would hinder 
 him in the unswerving loyalty that he must pay to 
 truth. 
 
 Literature. 
 Literature is the fragment of fragments. The 
 smallest part of what has been done and spoken has 
 been recorded ; and the smallest part of what has 
 been recorded has survived. 
 
LIT ERA TURE—POE TR V. 139 
 
 Gmius. 
 
 No productiveness of the highest kind, no remark- 
 able discovery, no great thought which bears fruit 
 and has results, is in the power of any one : such 
 things are elevated above all earthly control. Man 
 must consider them as an unexpected gift from above, 
 as the pure efflux of divine grace which he must re- 
 ceive and venerate with joyful thanks. They are akin 
 to the 5ai/iwi/, or genius of life, which does with him 
 what it pleases, and to which he unconsciously resigns 
 himself, whilst he believes he is acting from his 
 own impulse. In such cases, man may best be con- 
 sidered as an instrument in the higher government of 
 the world, as a vessel found worthy for the reception 
 of a divine influence. I say this while I consider 
 how often a single thought has given a different 
 form to whole centuries; and how individual men 
 have, by their expressions, imprinted a stamp upon 
 their age, which has remained uneffaced, and has 
 operated beneficially upon many succeeding gener- 
 ations. 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 Goethe showed me a very interesting English 
 work, which illustrated all Shakespeare in copper- 
 plates. Each page embraced, in six small designs, 
 one piece with small verses written beneath, so that 
 the leading idea and the most important situations of 
 
T40 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 each work were brought before the eyes. All these 
 immortal tragedies and comedies thus passed before 
 us like processions in a masque. 
 
 It is overpowering, he said, to look through these 
 little pictures. Thus for the first time we are made 
 to feel the infinite wealth and grandeur of this man's 
 mind. There is no motive in human life which he 
 has not exhibited and expressed. And all with what 
 ease and freedom ! 
 
 But we cannot talk about Shakespeare ; all speech 
 is inadequate. I have touched upon the subject in 
 my ' Wilhelm Meister' ; but that is not saying much. 
 He is not a theatrical poet; he never thought of the 
 stage ; it was far too narrow for his great mind — nay, 
 the whole visible world was too narrow. 
 
 He is even too rich and too powerful. A pro- 
 ductive nature ought not to read more than one of 
 his dramas in a year, if it would not be wrecked 
 entirely. I did well to get rid of him by writing 
 Goetz and Egmont; and Byron did well by not hav- 
 ing too much respect and admiration for him, but 
 going his own way. How many excellent Germans 
 have been ruined by him and Calderon ! 
 
 Shakespeare gives us golden apples in silver sal- 
 vers. We get, indeed, the silver salvers by studying 
 his works; but, unfortunately, we have only potatoes 
 to put into them. 
 
LIT ERA TURE—POE TR Y. 141 
 
 Taletit and the World. 
 
 The world cannot get on without men of talent ; 
 and yet they don't treat them very well when they 
 have them. 
 
 Subjective Poets. 
 
 Why poets are like bears ? because 
 They're always sucking their own claws. 
 
 Poetry and Melancholy. 
 
 The bright sunbeam, in shower of tears, 
 On a dark ground of cloud appears ; 
 And this explains, if you would know it. 
 The moody cast that marks the poet. 
 
 Sickly Poets. 
 
 Bah ! I can't stand such sickly trash : 
 Your books no doubt in tropes are wealthy ; 
 
 But ere you write again, my son. 
 Learn to be happy first and healthy. 
 
 Popularity. 
 
 Build for the future, and you may 
 Earn scanty plaudits from to-day ; 
 But serve the present, and you will 
 Pile pence and praise to glorify your skill. 
 
142 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 A bitter Critic. 
 
 Whose blame is bitter, and whose praise is scanty ? 
 The man who tried and failed — a dilettante ! 
 
 Poets. 
 
 What gives the poet power to move all hearts, 
 
 Each stubborn element to sway, 
 
 What but the harmony, his being's inmost tone, 
 
 That charms all feelings back into his own ? 
 
 Where listless Nature, her eternal thread. 
 
 The unwilling spindle twists around. 
 
 And hostile shocks of things that will not wed 
 
 With jarring dissonance resound, 
 
 Who guides with living pulse the rhythmic flow 
 
 Of powers that make sweet music as they go ? 
 
 Who consecrates each separate limb and soul 
 
 To beat in glorious concert with the whole ? 
 
 Who makes the surgy-swelling billow 
 
 Heave with the wildly heaving breast, 
 
 And on the evening's rosy pillow. 
 
 Invites the brooding heart to rest ? 
 
 Who scatters spring's most lovely blooms upon 
 
 The path of the beloved one ? 
 
 Who plaits the leaves that unregarded grow 
 
 Into a crown to deck the honoured brow ? 
 
 Who charms the gods? who makes Olympus yield ? 
 
 The power of man in poet's art revealed. 
 
LIT ERA TURE—POE TR V. 143 
 
 Poetry and Youth. 
 
 Then give me back the years again, 
 When mine own spirit too was growing, 
 When my whole being was a vein 
 Of native songs within me flowing ! 
 Then slept the world in misty blue. 
 Each bud the nascent wonder cherished. 
 And all for me the flowerets grew, 
 That on each meadow richly flourished. 
 Though I had nothing then, I had a treasure, 
 The thirst for truth, and in illusion pleasure. 
 Give me the free, unshackled pinion. 
 The height of joy, the depth of pain, 
 Strong hate, and stronger love's dominion ; 
 Oh give me back my youth again ! 
 
 Limitation. 
 
 Not for untutored souls that scorn restraint 
 
 The bays that bind high-honoured brows may grow; 
 
 But who would pluck the topmost Praise must learn 
 
 To lord his passion, and to rein his bent, ' 
 
 Have all his powers in hand, and bow with awe 
 
 To the free spirit's free self-sanctioned Law. 
 
 Literature and Faction. 
 
 Lutheran rage is lulled ; but now French fever is 
 
 rampant ; 
 Sacred or secular strifes murder the Muses the same. 
 
144 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Genus Irritablle Vahivi. 
 
 I know him well ; not hard is he to know, 
 
 Too proud to mask himself. You see him sink 
 
 Into himself, as if he held the world 
 
 In his sole bosom, in himself complete 
 
 A compact world, and all around him else 
 
 Vanished in blank indifference. It may rise 
 
 Or fall or float at large, no whit cares he — 
 
 When lo ! all in a minute, as when a mine 
 
 Fires at a spark, at touch of joy or sorrow, 
 
 Anger or whim, he breaks into a flame : 
 
 And then what he would grasp must own his hold, 
 
 And all things be that he thinks ought to be. 
 
 And in a moment to his wish must rise 
 
 What for long years in the slow womb of time 
 
 Needs silent preparation. From himself. 
 
 He with ingenious wilfulness demands 
 
 The impossible, that he may have a right 
 
 To ask the same from others. He would bind 
 
 The two ends of all things with hasty bond 
 
 In his soul, a task which in a million men 
 
 One may achieve — and he is not the man ; 
 
 But, clutching madly at the stars, he falls 
 
 Back to the earth, no bigger than before. 
 
 Originality. 
 
 You're a disciple of no school. 
 And own no livino: master's rule ; 
 
LIT ERA TURE—POE TR Y. 145 
 
 Nor have dead men in Greece or Rome 
 Taught you things better learned at home ; 
 This means, if I am not mistaking — 
 You're a prime fool of your own making. 
 
 Critics. 
 
 Did I, when you went a-warring, 
 Bid your bloody battles cease ? 
 
 Did I make loud protestation, 
 
 When your Congress patched a peace ? 
 
 Did I tell the practised angler 
 Where to fling his baited line? 
 
 Did I give the wright instructions 
 Where to split, and where to join ? 
 
 "Stuiyou will give me directions 
 How to read and how to write 
 
 From the mighty book which Nature 
 Opened to the poet's sight. 
 
 If you have the poet's vision, 
 
 Show what thing God showed to you ; 
 But, if my work you would measure, 
 
 First learn what I meant to do. 
 
146 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Poetry. 
 
 Poetry is a gushing well 
 
 That scorns the niggard measure, 
 Keeps the blood warm, and makes it swell 
 
 In pulsing veins of pleasure. 
 
 Blame me not ! — the cup of sorrow. 
 
 When it comes to me, 
 I can sip, nor need to borrow 
 
 Modest airs from thee. 
 
 Modesty's a pretty thing 
 
 In a maid when wooed ; 
 Modestly she folds her wing 
 
 From handling coarse and rude. 
 
 And sober thought, the wise man says. 
 
 In wise hour teaches me 
 For time to order well my days. 
 
 And for eternity. 
 
 But rhyme disowns the sober mood ; 
 
 I love to rhyme alone, 
 Or with one friend or two whose blood 
 
 Flows kindly with my own ! 
 
LIT ERA TURE—POE TR Y. 147 
 
 Cowled or uncowled, let preachers come 
 
 To dam my foaming river ; 
 They may prevail to make me dumb, 
 
 But to be sober never ! 
 
 When the poet's fancy burns, 
 
 Be slow to reprimand him ; 
 You'll forgive his wildest turns, 
 
 When once you understand him ! 
 
PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS, LOGIC, 
 TRUTH, AND SCIENCE 
 
 §^Ile ^posfljjl^w muss gcUbt vmti gclitbt fo«rb^n. 
 
PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS, LOGIC, 
 TRUTH, AND SCIENCE. 
 
 Spiritualism — Moral Magnetism. 
 
 We all walk in mysteries. We are surrounded by 
 an atmosphere of which we do not know what is 
 stirring in it, or how it is connected with our own 
 spirit. So much is certain — that in particular cases 
 we can put out the feelers of our soul beyond its 
 bodily limits, and that a presentiment — nay, an actual 
 insight — into the immediate future is accorded to it. 
 Besides, one soul may have a decided influence 
 upon another merely by means of its silent presence, 
 of which I could relate many instances. It has often 
 happened to me that, when I have been walking with 
 an acquaintance, and have had a living image of 
 something in my mind, he has at once begun to 
 speak of that very thing. I have also known a man 
 who, without saying a word, could suddenly silence 
 a party engaged in cheerful conversation by the 
 mere power of his mind. Nay, he could also intro- 
 
152 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 duce a tone which would make everybody feel 
 uncomfortable. We have all something of electric 
 and magnetic forces within us, and we put forth, like 
 the magnet itself, an attractive or repulsive power 
 accordingly, as we come in contact with something 
 similar or dissimilar. It is possible, nay, even prob- 
 able, that if a young girl were, without knowing it, 
 to find herself in a dark chamber with a man who 
 designed to murder her, she would have an uneasy 
 sense of his unknown presence, and that an anguish 
 would come over her which would drive her from the 
 room to the family parlour. 
 
 Metaphysics. 
 
 Man must always in some sense cling to the belief 
 that the unknowable is knowable, otherwise specula- 
 tion would cease. 
 
 The universal and the particular are one. The 
 particular is the universal, seen under special con- 
 ditions. 
 
 Truth. 
 
 It is not always necessary that truth should be 
 embodied; enough if it hover, spirit -like, around 
 us and produce harmony ; if it float through the air 
 like the sweetly solemn chiming of a minster bell. 
 
PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS, ETC. 153 
 
 To understand that the sky is everywhere blue, we 
 need not go round the world. 
 
 One need not see or live through everything for 
 himself; only, if we chose to confide in others, and 
 in their representations, we must remember that we 
 have in such case to do with three things — the 
 matter on hand and two persons. 
 
 There are not a few persons in the world who, if 
 they had not felt themselves bound to repeat what is 
 untrue, simply because they had once said it, would 
 have become something quite different from what 
 they are. 
 
 What is not true has this advantage, that it can be 
 eternally talked about ; whereas about truth there is 
 an urgency that cries out for its application ; for 
 otherwise it has no right to be there. 
 
 Aristotle and the Greeks. 
 
 When we look at the problems of Aristotle, we 
 are amazed by the powers of observation of the 
 Greeks, and how they had eyes for everything. They 
 were possessed, however, by the vice of hasty gener- 
 alisation, leaping from the phenomenon direct to 
 the conclusion ; and in this way many inadequate 
 theories were allowed to assert themselves. This is 
 
154 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 a vice, however, to which human nature even at the 
 present day is scarcely less prone. 
 
 The Germans. 
 
 The Germans have, above all other nations, the 
 art of making the sciences inaccessible to the people. 
 
 Causes and Effects. 
 
 Man finds himself in the midst of a multitude of 
 effects, and cannot refrain from searching out their 
 causes. As an easy-going creature, he grasps at 
 what is nearest to him, and rests satisfied with that. 
 This procedure is that known in philosophical books 
 as the common-sense method. 
 
 Teleology — Design — Final Causes. 
 
 It is natural to man to look upon himself as the 
 chief end of the creation, and to look upon all other 
 things as existing only in reference to the service and 
 the utility which they may be of to him. He appro- 
 priates the vegetable and the animal world ; and 
 while he devours other creatures as suitable nourish- 
 ment to himself, he acknowledges God, and praises 
 the goodness which in such a fatherly style has pro- 
 vided for mankind. From the cow he takes milk, 
 from the bee honey, from the sheep wool ; and while 
 he gets from the creature a result useful to himself, 
 readily assumes that it was created solely for that 
 
PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS, ETC. 155 
 
 purpose. Nay, he can scarcely imagine that even 
 the smallest weed that grows has not some relation 
 to himself ; and though he may not be able at pres- 
 ent to see how its existence serves his need, he 
 believes that one day its special character of sub- 
 serviency to human wants will be made apparent. 
 
 And as man thinks in general, so also in special 
 domains of inquiry, he without hesitation transfers 
 his principle of judging in the affairs of common 
 life into the field of science ; and accordingly, sets 
 himself to search after the special aim and utility 
 of each individual member or part of every organic 
 being. 
 
 This will pass very well for a time, and even per- 
 form good service to science ; but by-and-by he will 
 stumble upon phenomena, where such a narrow and 
 partial view proves inadequate, and where, without 
 any higher clue, he will find himself entangled in 
 sheer contradictions. Such utilitarian doctors say, 
 No doubt the ox has horns to butt with them ; and 
 then, I ask. Why has the sheep none .? and when it 
 happens to have any. Why are they twisted round 
 the ear so as to be of no use ? 
 
 It is an altogether different matter, however, when 
 I say the ox butts with its horns because it has 
 them. 
 
 To ask the object for which anything exists, to put 
 the question Why, is altogether unscientific. 
 
 With the question How, on the other hand, we 
 
156 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 advance further ; for, when I ask how the ox has 
 horns, this leads me to the consideration of his 
 organisation, and teaches me at the same time why 
 the lion has no horns, and cannot possibly have 
 them. 
 
 In the same way man has in his skull two cavities 
 which are not filled up. In this case the question 
 Why, for what purpose, would be of little avail. 
 But the question How teaches me that these cavities 
 are remains of the animal skull, which in the lower 
 organisations are found in greater quantity, and of 
 which even in the high development which man 
 presents, vestiges remain. 
 
 The utilitarian doctors would think they had lost 
 their God if they were not to worship that Being 
 who gave the ox horns to butt with ; but let them 
 allow me to worship Him who in the wealth of His 
 creativeness was so great, that after thousands of 
 plants had grown. He could produce one which 
 contained the excellences of all the rest, and who, 
 after creating thousands of animals, could crown 
 the array with one that contained them all — namely, 
 Man. 
 
 Let these persons worship that great Being who 
 gives grass to the cow, and food and drink to man, as 
 much as he can enjoy. I worship Him rather who 
 has put such a power of productiveness into the 
 world that, if only the millionth part of it assumes 
 reality, the world still swarms with creatures to such 
 
PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS, ETC. 157 
 
 an extent, that neither war, nor pestilence, nor inun- 
 dation, nor conflagration, can have any sensible 
 effect in destroying it. That is my God.^ 
 
 Truth — Knowledge. 
 
 Lessing, who felt painfully many cramping limi- 
 tations in life, makes one of his characters say, no 
 ma7t must must. To this a man of an alert and 
 active mind replied, wJio wills micst. A third, cer- 
 tainly a man of culture, added, whoever understands 
 clearly wills also; and in this way they thought to 
 have completed the entire circle of Knowledge, 
 Will, and Necessity. But in general a man's 
 knowledge fixes his course of action; and therefore 
 nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in 
 action. 
 
 Authority. 
 
 Authority — viz., the fact that a thing has already 
 been done, said, or decided — has a high value ; but 
 only a formalist asks for authority to help him to a 
 decision in all possible cases. 
 
 1 The difference between a true and an artificial teleology is 
 well expressed by a recent writer : ' ' We understand the egg 
 by thinking of the chicken, but this is not to explain eggs by 
 omelettes." Ritchie, in ' Essays on Philosophical Criticism : ' 
 London, 1833. In other words— divine ends are one thing, 
 human appropriation another. — J. S. B. 
 
158 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 opinions. 
 
 Since nothing is so important to people as their 
 opinions, every one who propounds an opinion looks 
 about him right and left for props with which to 
 support it. Of TRUTH he makes use, as long as he 
 finds it serviceable; but seizes w'^on falsehood yN\\h. 
 a passionate rhetoric, if only it can be used with a 
 look of logic to fling a glamour, in the eyes of the 
 contradictor, or even to serve as a convenient stop- 
 gap for the nonce. 
 
 Reason and yudgment. 
 
 The reason has to do with things in the process 
 of evolution J judgment with things evolved. The 
 one does not vex itself with the question, /^r w/z^/ 
 purpose? the other does not 2Lsk,from what source? 
 The one rejoices in the discovery of a cause, the 
 other in the application of a result. 
 
 Analogy. 
 
 Analogy has two errors to fear,— the one when it 
 contents itself with being serviceable to wit, in 
 which case it floats away in futile sport ; the other, 
 when it shrouds itself in tropes and similes : this 
 last is the less dangerous of the two. 
 
PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS, ETC. 159 
 
 Myths. 
 
 Neither myths nor legends are to be tolerated in 
 scie7iccj let us then leave to the poet, whose pro- 
 vince it is, to use them for the benefit and amusement 
 of the world. The scientific man should limit him- 
 self to the nearest and clearest material that lies 
 before him. If, however, he chooses occasionally to 
 come forth in the oratorical vein, this also may be 
 allowed him, provided he remembers what he is 
 about. 
 
 Truth — Science. 
 
 Much confusion in science, and in everything else, 
 arises from this, that men who have no capacity for 
 thought will presume to theorise, because they can- 
 not see that mere stores of hiowledge, however vast, 
 in themselves give no capacity for thinking. Such 
 persons, at starting, will go on working with a fair 
 amount of common-sense, and succeed pretty well ; 
 bat common -sense has its limits, beyond which, 
 when it passes, it is in danger of becoming absurd. 
 The province of common -sense is active life. In 
 action it will not lightly go wrong ; but the higher 
 regions of thought, speculation, and large conclu- 
 sions, are altogether outside of its jurisdiction. 
 
 A historical feeling for humanity is that in which 
 a large natural sympathy has been so cultivated, that 
 
i6o THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 in its judgments of contemporary worth the merits of 
 the past are fairly brought into consideration. One 
 must bear in mind that there are many persons who 
 will insist on saying something original, without 
 possessing any genuine productive faculty ; hence 
 the strangest attempts at cleverness, and striking 
 feats of real cleverness without truth, or motive, or 
 love, are constantly thrusting themselves into view. 
 
 Earnest and profoundly thoughtful men can never 
 expect to find it easy to gain for themselves a favour- 
 able position as against the general public. 
 
 Every great idea, as soon as it realises itself, works 
 tyrannically ; hence the benefits with which it was 
 fraught are only too soon changed into evils. Bear- 
 ing this in mind, any man may find it easy to defend 
 or extol any institution, if he only recalls its begin- 
 nings, and gives himself some pains to demonstrate 
 that all the excellence which gave a charm to its 
 birth remains unchanged in its continued existence. 
 
 Physics and Metaphysics. 
 
 There are not a few problems in the natural 
 sciences of which a man cannot speak justly without 
 calling metaphysics to his aid ; not technical words 
 about knowing and being, such as make a show in 
 the schools, but that wisdom of thought which was 
 
PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS, ETC. i6i 
 
 before all physics, lives with it, and will endure 
 after it. 
 
 Natural a7id Artificial Vision. 
 
 Microscopes and telescopes, properly considered, 
 put our human eyes out of their natural, healthy, and 
 profitable point of view. 
 
 Silence. 
 
 I look on and hold my tongue about many things, 
 because I would not disturb others in their faith or 
 enjoyment, and am content that they should find   
 pleasure in what is distasteful to me. 
 
 Philology. 
 
 The business of the philologer is to exercise his 
 wit on the congruity of written tradition. The writ- 
 ten document lies at the foundation ; and with it 
 even gaps and slips of the pen, which obscure the 
 sense of the passage — everything, in short, that may 
 be defective in a manuscript. A second copy is 
 found, and a third ; and the comparison of these 
 makes ever more apparent the meaning and signifi- 
 cance of the matter handed down. The scholar goes 
 yet farther, and demands of his inner judgment that, 
 apart from external aid, it shall make more and more 
 clear the significance of the matter submitted to 
 interpretation. For this a certain tact and insight 
 
 L 
 
i62 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 into ancient authors are necessary ; also a certain 
 degree of inventiveness ; so that one must not blame 
 him, if he sometimes claims for himself the right 
 to decide on points purely assthetical — in which 
 domain, however, he must not expect always to 
 succeed.^ 
 
 Experience. 
 
 He who will be content with actual experience has 
 light enough. The growing child is in this sense 
 wise. 
 
 Theory. 
 
 Theory is of no use in itself; but only in so far as 
 it helps us to believe in the coherency of phenomena. 
 
 Philosophy — Plato and Aristotle. 
 
 Plato is not so much a citizen of this world, as a 
 blessed spirit, whom it has pleased for a certain period 
 to make his lodgment here. It is not so much his 
 business to know the world, which he rather pre- 
 supposes, as to communicate to us, in a kindly way, 
 those fundamental typical truths which he has 
 brought with him from a higher sphere. He plunges 
 into the deep places of our existence here, more with 
 
 1 German scholarship abounds with examples of ingenious 
 impertinence, caused by the confounding of these two essen- 
 tially diverse functions.— J. S. B. 
 
PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS, ETC. 163 
 
 the view of filling its voids with his fulness, than to 
 make investigations and inductions. His tendency is 
 always upward, possessed constantly with a longing 
 to return to his divine home. Every word that he 
 utters has reference to a totality of the good, the 
 beautiful, and the true, the growth of which in every 
 human breast it is his grand object to promote. 
 What he appropriates to himself of merely earthly 
 knowledge, melts, or one might even say exhales, in 
 his method and in his style. 
 
 Aristotle, on the other hand, stands to the world in 
 the relation of a man like ourselves — an architect. 
 He finds himself here, once for all, with the destiny 
 to work and to organise. As an architect he ex- 
 amines the soil carefully, but not farther than is 
 required for his foundation. What may be found 
 deeper down to the centre of the earth is no concern 
 of his. For his architecture he encloses a tremen- 
 dous breadth of ground, brings in materials from all 
 quarters, arranges them skilfully, and piles them up 
 with the solid masonry of a pyramid ; while Plato 
 shoots into the upper regions, like an obelisk or a 
 spire of flame. 
 
 When such a pair of men, who in a fashion divided 
 humanity among themselves, as separate represen- 
 tatives of admirable qualities of intellect, not easily 
 united in one character, had the good fortune to 
 grow up into a perfect culture, and to put forth the 
 abundant fruit of that culture, not merely in short 
 
i64 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 laconic aphorisms and maxims, but in various works 
 largely conceived, and executed with extraordinary- 
 comprehensiveness and completeness ; and when 
 these works were not lost, but remained extant for 
 the benefit of mankind, so as to be made the con- 
 stant subject of study and contemplation ; — under 
 such circumstances it necessarily follows that the 
 world in its thinking and feeling capacity was 
 necessitated to attach itself to the one or the other 
 of these two representative men, acknowledging him 
 as master, teacher, and guide. 
 
 This necessity, under which the human mind lay, 
 of submitting itself to be moulded by these two 
 Titanic intellects, appears most strikingly in the 
 history of Bible hermeneutics. The sacred volume, 
 with the wonderful independence,' entire originality, 
 many-sidedness, and completeness — yea, incalculable- 
 ness — of its contents, brought with it no standard by 
 which its own greatness could be measured : this 
 standard, accordingly, had to be sought for extrinsi- 
 cally, and applied ; and the whole motley army of 
 those who came together with this common object — 
 Jews and Christians, saints and sinners, orthodox 
 fathers and heretics, councils and popes, reformers 
 and protesters, — all of them, whether wishing doctrin- 
 ally to expound or practically to apply the lessons of 
 the Book, did it, consciously or unconsciously, in the 
 method of Plato or Aristotle. 
 
 As with the peoples, so with the centuries,— we 
 
PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS, ETC. 165 
 
 find them under the headship of Aristotle and Plato, 
 now in peaceful recognition, now in violent antag- 
 onism ; and it is to be looked on as not the least fa- 
 vourable symptom of the present age, that it pays 
 a willing and grateful homage to both these great 
 men, as indeed, more than three centuries ago, the 
 catholic appreciation of Raphael, in his school of 
 Athens, had assigned to both sages their rightful 
 place in the council of the wise. 
 
 Spinozisjn. 
 
 A Spinozistic cast of thought, which consorts well 
 with the poetic instinct, the moment it is manipulated 
 by reflection, becomes Machiavellism. 
 
 Prejudices. 
 
 The prejudices of men are rooted for the most part 
 in their personal character ; and on account of this 
 close connection with the roots of personal existence, 
 they cannot be removed. Neither evidence, nor un- 
 derstanding, nor reason, has the least effect on them. 
 
 Trtith. 
 
 Truth is a torch, but a terrible one ; oftentimes so 
 terrible that the natural instinct of us all is to give 
 a side-glance with a blinking eye, lest, looking it 
 fairly in the face, the strong glare might blind us. 
 
i66 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Men of Learning. 
 
 Learned men are generally hateful when they set 
 themselves to the work of refutation. The man 
 whose error employs them for the time they look 
 upon as their mortal enemy. 
 
 German and Scotch Philosophy. 
 
 The reason why foreigners can make so little of 
 our philosophy is simply this, that it has no direct 
 relation to life. They cannot perceive what practical 
 advantage they are to get from it, and for this reason 
 they turn their attention more or less to the Scottish 
 doctrine as it is set forth by Reid and Stewart. This 
 doctrine has an affinity with the notions which guide 
 men in ordinary life, and in this way acquires favour. 
 It seems to reconcile the sensuous and the spiritual 
 aspect of things, and to render possible the agree- 
 ment of the real with the ideal, and thereby to bring 
 about a more perfect state of human thinking and 
 acting ; and the very fact of its doing so, and holding 
 forth such promises, gains for this school disciples 
 and admirers. 
 
 Philology. 
 
 The confounding of one consonant with another 
 might arise from an incapacity of the organs of 
 speech ; while the transformation of vowels into diph- 
 
PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS, ETC. 167 
 
 thongs might have been caused from some action of 
 real or affected pathos. 
 
 Truth and Error. 
 
 Truth in certain regions runs counter to our nature; 
 not so Error; and this from a very simple cause. 
 The demand of truth frequently is, that we shall 
 acknowledge our limitation ; whereas error fre- 
 quently fans in our souls the flattering conceit that 
 in some favourite direction we may use unlimited 
 sway, and all things be subject to our conception. 
 
 A nalogy — Induction. 
 
 Thinking by analogy is not to be despised. Analogy 
 has this merit, that it does not settle things — does not 
 pretend to be conclusive. On the other hand, that 
 induction is pernicious which, with a preconceived 
 end in view, and working right forward for only that, 
 drags in its train a number of unsifted observations, 
 both false and true. 
 
 Self-delusion. 
 
 We are all so bornd, as the French call it, so limited 
 in our understandings, that we always believe that 
 we are in the right ; and so a man of great genius 
 may readily exist who is not only wrong in important 
 matters, but delights and revels in his wrongness. 
 
i68 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Freedom from Error. 
 
 There is a sort of men who never go wrong, be- 
 cause they never propose to themselves anything 
 reasonable to do. 
 
 Truth mid Error. 
 
 It is much easier to recognise error than to discover 
 truth ; the one lies on the surface, and can be lightly 
 picked up by a sharp eye; the other lies below, in 
 depths which it is not every man's business to sound. 
 
 Spinoza. 
 
 I am reading Spinoza with Frau von Stein. I 
 feel myself very near to him, though his soul is much 
 deeper and purer than mine. 
 
 I cannot say that I ever read Spinoza straight 
 through, that at any time the complete architec- 
 ture of his intellectual system has stood clear in 
 view before me. But when I look into him I seem 
 to understand him — that is, he always appears to me 
 consistent with himself, and I can always gather from 
 him very salutary influences for my own way of feel- 
 ing and acting. 
 
PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS, ETC. 169 
 
 Ceiisorious7iess. 
 
 It is always disagreeable when a man's self-esteem 
 lets itself out in disparagement of others, even when 
 they are very small men. A frivolous character may 
 take his joke out of others, and treat them with every 
 disrespect, just because he has no respect for himself. 
 He who has learnt on solid grounds to put some value 
 on himself, seems to have renounced the right of 
 undervaluing others. And what are the best of us, 
 that we should lift ourselves proudly above our 
 brethren ? 
 
 Freedom and Nature — Jacobi and Schelling — 
 K 7101)0 ledge and Love. 
 
 Jacobi's book against Schelling ^ was welcome to 
 me, as helping me to realise the statum cotitroversice 
 between the cham.pions of nature and those of free- 
 dom, which I had gone through with more or less 
 completeness in my own experience. Nevertheless I 
 must honestly confess that it gave me a sort of un- 
 comfortable feeling. The truth is, that I am once 
 for all the Ephesian goldsmith who have spent my 
 whole life in the reverential contemplation of the 
 great temple of the goddess, and in the artistic em- 
 bodiment of her mysterious forms, and to whom it 
 cannot possibly be an agreeable sensation when an 
 
 1 Von den Gottlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung, 181 1. 
 
I70 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 apostle comes in upon me and insists upon forcing 
 on me and my fellow-citizens a new god, and that a 
 god without a form. Had I written a similar book 
 in praise of the great Diana, — which, however, is not 
 my business, because I belong to that class of men 
 who love to live in peace, and not to stir up the 
 people — but had I been moved to write such an 
 apology, — I should have written on the reverse of the 
 title-page. We learn to know nothing but what 
 WE love ; and the deeper we mean to penetrate into 
 any matter with insight, the stronger and more vital 
 must our love and passion be. 
 
 Knowledge. 
 
 I have been led to remark that a life full of activity 
 and practice is scarcely sufficient to bring our know- 
 ledge to the highest point of purity and clearness. 
 And yet to do this one thing only well — to acquire 
 security and certainty in the appreciation of things 
 exactly as they are, and to know them in their due 
 subordination and in their proper relation to one 
 another — this is really the highest enjoyment to 
 which we ought to aspire, whether in the sphere of 
 art, of nature, or of life. 
 
 Mathe?natics. 
 
 Mathematics, like dialectics, is an instrument of 
 the inner higher understanding. Applied to practice. 
 
PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS, ETC. 171 
 
 it becomes an art, like Rhetoric. In both these arts 
 the form is everything, the substance nothing. To 
 mathematics it is indifferent whether it reckons pence 
 or pounds ; to Rhetoric, whether it defends truth or 
 falsehood. 
 
 Mathematics can remove no prejudices and soften 
 no obduracy. It has no influence in sweetening the 
 bitter strife of parties ; and in the moral world gener- 
 ally its action" is perfectly null. 
 
 The mathematician is only in so far complete as 
 he is a complete man, and feels within himself the 
 beauty of truth. Then only will his work be pro- 
 found, lucid, wise, genuine, pleasant, and even grace- 
 ful. All this he must be, if he would be like La 
 Grange. 
 
 Antiquity of Wisdom. 
 
 All truly wise thoughts have been thought already 
 thousands of times ; but to make them truly ours, we 
 must think them over again honestly, till they take 
 firm root in our personal experience. 
 
 Kant : Innate Ideas. 
 
 I agree with Kant's first sentence, that, though all 
 our knowledge arises by occasion of experience, it 
 does not therefore grow out of experience ; further, 
 
172 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 in this, tiiat no idea completely and in all points 
 agrees with experience ; nevertheless, idea and ex- 
 perience may be, or rather must be, in analogical 
 correspondence. 
 
 Prophets. 
 
 Madman and dreamer they cried to Calchas, they 
 
 cried to Cassandra, 
 Then when they sailed for Troy, then when from Troy 
 
 they returned ; 
 Who will hear of to-morrow, when yesterday's lesson 
 
 to mortals 
 Trumpet-tongued no man cares to remember to-day ? 
 
 The Whole and its Parts. 
 
 Wouldst comprehend the whole ? then learn to scan 
 The parts : each part is parcel of the plan. 
 
 Or so, 
 
 Wouldst know the whole ? then scan the parts ; for 
 
 all 
 That moulds the great lies mirrored in the small. 
 
 Show and Siibstance. 
 
 What show could be, unless of substance shown ; 
 And what were substance, if not shown to be ? 
 
PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS, ETC. 173 
 
 Philosophy : its Upshot. 
 
 I'm open-eared to hear you, prophets, sages, 
 Poets and preachers, sounding through the ages ; 
 I'm here to learn, but on this one condition. 
 That you be short, no big-mouthed exposition ; 
 For all your wisdom, when I analyse it, 
 
 Must mean but this — 
 To know the world, and yet not to despise it. 
 
 Truth. 
 Well, sir ! I deem, the truth to tell, 
 
 We never speak the truth completely ; 
 But true with false compounded well 
 
 Is the repast that tastes most sweetly. 
 
 Speculative Systejns. 
 
 Weave your cobwebs in the sky ! 
 
 You're clever men, I don't deny it ; 
 But in my lowly circle I 
 
 Live my life, and profit by it. 
 
 Bird-Philosophy. 
 
 Seest thou the bird, how it flies from tree to tree of 
 
 the orchard. 
 Hopping from branch to branch, pecking the pear 
 
 and the plum ? 
 
174 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Ask him, for he can discourse, and with eloquent 
 
 prattle will tell you. 
 Verily he hath pierced nature's deep heart with his 
 
 bill ! 
 
 First Rule of Wisdojn. 
 
 Use well the moment, and with seeing eyes 
 Peruse the thing that's next thee, and be wise! 
 
 Pre-established Har?nony. 
 
 Were not a sun-like yirtue in the eye. 
 It would not seek the sun that rules the sky; 
 And, were no God within to stir the brain. 
 The God without would speak to us in vain. 
 
 Liberty and Necessity. 
 
 Had God wished me to be a different man 
 From what I am, of spirit made and dust, 
 He would have made me on a different plan 
 But, since I have the gift I have, I must 
 Use it with jealous care and holy trust. 
 I use it here, I use it there, 
 With what good fruit I scarcely know ; 
 But, when my work of fruit is bare, 
 He'll say, — old bard, 'tis time to go ! 
 
PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS, ETC. 175 
 
 Freedom and Necessity. 
 
 What happen must 
 Will happen. In quite common things, the will 
 And choice of men may triumph ; but the highest 
 That rules our fate comes only God knows whence. 
 
 Love. 
 
 Nothing that is is stable. Many a jar 
 
 'Twixt man and man, the rolling seasons melt 
 
 By sweet gradations into harmony ; 
 
 But that which bridges o'er the biggest gap 
 
 Is Love, whose charm binds topmost heaven to earth. 
 
 Logic. 
 
 Redeem the time, for fast it fleets away. 
 But order rules the hour it cannot stay. 
 Therefore 'tis plain that you must pass 
 First of all through the logic class. 
 There will your mind be postured rightly, 
 Laced up in Spanish buskins tightly. 
 That with caution and care, as wisdom ought, 
 It may creep along the path of thought. 
 And not with fitful flickering glow 
 Will-o'-the-wisp it to and fro. 
 There, too, if you hear the gentleman through 
 The term, to every lecture true, 
 
176 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 You'll learn that a stroke of human thinking, 
 Which you had practised once as free 
 And natural as eating and drinking, 
 Cannot be made without one ! two ! three ! 
 True, it should seem that the tissue of thought 
 Is like a web by cunning master wrought, 
 Where one stroke moves a thousand threads. 
 And one with the others thousand-fold weds : 
 Then steps the philosopher forth to show 
 How of need it must be so : 
 If the first be so, the second is so, 
 And therefore the third and the fourth is so ; 
 And unless the first and the second before be, 
 The third and the fourth can never more be. 
 So schoolmen teach and scholars believe. 
 But none of them yet ever learned to weave. 
 He who strives to know a thing well 
 Must first the spirit within expel, 
 Then can he count the parts in his hand, 
 Only without the spiritual band. 
 Encheiresis naturcE, 'tis clept in Chemistry, 
 Thus laughing at herself, albeit she knows not 
 why. 
 
 Nonsense. 
 
 Speak nonsense by the yard, or print 
 A book with nouerht but nonsense in't, 
 
PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS, ETC. 177 
 
 You'll break no bones ; with all your stir, 
 Things will remain just as they were. 
 But nonsense planted 'fore the eyes, 
 Hath glamour to confound the wise ; 
 It holds the sense with strong control, 
 And through the sense subdues the soul. 
 
NATURE— NATURAL HISTORY 
 
 Ma hsst u^ ^it^, ixmxiiilu^z 'gvdnt 
 
NATURE— NATURAL HISTORY. 
 
 God and Nature. 
 
 The contemplation of the architecture of the uni- 
 verse in the infinitely great and infinitely little of 
 which it is composed, leads us inevitably to the con- 
 clusion that at the bottom of the v^^hole an idea lies, 
 according to which God in nature, and nature in 
 God from eternity to eternity, works and shapes forth 
 all things. Observation and reflection bring us con- 
 tinually nearer to these mysteries. 
 
 Physical Science : its Sphere and its Limits. 
 
 Every thinking man that looks at his almanac or 
 his watch, will think with gratitude on the great 
 master of science to whom he owes these most use- 
 ful aids in the business of life. But allowing them all 
 the regard that they may justly lay claim to in the 
 domain of space and time, these mechanical aids 
 must acknowledge that we, in our specially human 
 sphere, are conscious of the existence of something 
 
i82 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 that goes far beyond all contrivances of the kind, how- 
 ever cunning — something that is part of the universal 
 and catholic heritage of humanity, and without which 
 these curious helps would lose all grace of helping — 
 viz., the IDEA, and love.^ 
 
 Flowers. 
 
 Flowers are the beautiful hieroglyphics of Nature, 
 with which she indicates how much she loves us. 
 
 Natural History and Moral Science — Education. 
 
 The knowledge of nature is a good thing ; but it 
 must be studied primarily in its natural and healthy 
 connection with ourselves. I would not force young 
 people to court a curious intimacy with worms, and 
 beetles, and monkeys, and other creatures removed 
 from the natural range of human sympathy. With 
 nature we should have nothing to do in the first 
 place, except with so much of it as forms our living 
 
 1 The use of the word Idea here is Platonic ; i.e., the great 
 original thought of the Divine Being from which all the per- 
 manent types of things in this reasonable universe are shaped 
 forth. Of this idea, man becomes partaker by virtue of his 
 creation in the image of God, by the careful cherishing of the 
 ideas which are ramifications of the original idea, and by sympa- 
 thetic passion or love, which, as Goethe constantly emphasises, 
 is the steam-power that sets all our cognitive machinery in 
 healthy motion. Without love, the keenest and the most com- 
 prehensive intellect is merely a circular case of lancets, fit for 
 nothing but cutting.— J. S. B. 
 
NATURE— NATURAL HISTORY. 183 
 
 environment. With every green tree whose rich leaf- 
 age surrounds us, with every shrub on the roadside 
 where we walk, with every grass that bends to the 
 breeze in the field through which we pass, we have a 
 natural relationship — they are our true compatriots. 
 The birds that hop from twig to twig in our gardens, 
 that sing in our bowers, are part of ourselves ; they 
 speak to us from our earliest years, and we learn to 
 understand their language. Let a man ask himself, 
 and he will find that every creature sundered from 
 its natural surroundings, and brought into strange 
 company, makes an unpleasant impression on us, 
 which disappears only by habit. A man must live in 
 a certain whirl of motley life before he can have any 
 natural pleasure in apes, and parrots, and negro boys, 
 and suchlike. If such odd and paradoxical creatures 
 are to be studied in a healthy way, it must be in their 
 native lands and amid their natural surroundings; 
 and that master of natural science alone is worthy ot 
 respect who presents to us every creature, however 
 strange and however odd, in its proper element and 
 neighbourhood. Humboldt can so describe nature, 
 and him I gladly hear. 
 
 A museum of natural history always seems to me 
 like the tombs of Egyptian kings, in which various 
 sorts of beasts and plants are preserved in mummified 
 rigidity. These oddities may claim a curious atten- 
 tion from a caste of mystical priests ; but into the 
 
i84 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 sphere of general education such objects should never 
 enter — not only as being out of place, but as in all 
 likelihood displacing things which have better right 
 to occupy the attention of the young. A teacher who 
 tries to awaken the sympathetic interest of young 
 persons in a single noble deed, or a single really good 
 and heroic poem, does more towards his true growth 
 than one who can tell off before him the names and 
 describe the appearances of thousands of the inferior 
 animals : for the upshot of all that curious study of 
 low organisms is simply what we know already, — that 
 man, and man alone, has in a peculiar and special 
 sense been created in the image of God. 
 
 Individuals may be allowed to occupy themselves 
 with natural objects and living creatures in the way 
 that each may consider agreeable or useful ; but 
 always and everywhere the proper study of mankind 
 
 The Typical Animal. 
 
 Experience best teaches the parts which are com- 
 mon to all animals : and in what respects these parts, 
 though fundamentally the same, differ in each genus. 
 Then abstraction comes in to classify the whole and 
 construct a general scheme or type. This general 
 type, which, of course, we have first to construct, and 
 which it is our business as men of research to follow 
 out in its minutest details, we shall find to be in the 
 
NATURE— NATURAL HISTORY. 185 
 
 / gross and scope of its presentation unchangeable ; 
 and even the highest classes of animals, not excluding 
 the mammalia, will exhibit, under great diversity of 
 form, a wonderful identity of fundamental type. 
 
 Physical Scieftce. 
 
 A science, like every human creation and institution, 
 is a Titanic structure of mingled false and true, of 
 arbitrary and necessary. The common observations 
 on nature and its procedure which we make from day 
 to day, in whatever terms expressed, are really, after 
 all, only symptoms which, if any real wisdom is to 
 result from our studies, must be traced back to the 
 physiological and pathological principles of which 
 they are the exponents. 
 
 The Critical School and Nature. 
 
 Schiller and the Kantians are never tired of 
 preaching the gospel of freedom ; so be it : but only 
 so that we do not ignore or overlook the absolute 
 right of nature in certain matters. Jacobi, in his 
 book on the things of God, uses the expression that 
 " nature veils God" : there is a meaning in this; but 
 it is not for me, who have always been led by the 
 force of an uncontrollable tendency, to see God in 
 nature, and nature in God. What I see is not 
 veiled. 
 
i86 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Development. 
 
 When plants and animals are looked at in their 
 first germs, it is almost impossible to distinguish 
 them. A vital point, movable or half movable, is 
 all that we can see, or scarcely see. Whether this 
 rudimentary point is determinable on both sides, so 
 as through the agency of light to be developed into 
 the plant, or through darkness into an animal, we 
 cannot say, although there are not wanting observa- 
 tions and analogies which point to this conclusion. 
 But this much we may surely say, that the organ- 
 isms which we know under the names of plants and 
 animals, from the cradle of a scarce distinguishable 
 relationship, by little and little usher themselves into 
 day, become perfected in two opposite directions, in 
 such fashion that the plant is glorified into the per- 
 manent stoutness and durability of the tree ; while 
 the animal mounts up to the perfection of mobility 
 and freedom in man. 
 
 Specification. 
 
 Nature, in her process of specification, seems to 
 get, so to speak, into a ctil de sac, where she cannot 
 advance, and whence she will not recede. Hence 
 the persistency of national types of character. 
 
NATURE— NATURAL HISTORY. 187 
 
 Nature and Religion. 
 
 Assuredly there is no more lovely worship of God 
 than that for which no image is required, but which 
 springs up in our breast spontaneously, when nature 
 speaks to the soul, and the soul speaks to nature face 
 to face. 
 
 Nature — Observation — Systems. 
 
 Individual observations, drawn from the natural 
 objects with which we are in contact, are often the 
 more valuable, the less the observer professionally 
 belongs to the particular department of science which 
 he illustrates. 
 
 As soon as any one swears to a certain narrow 
 creed in science, every unprejudiced and true per- 
 ception is gone. The decided Vulcanist always sees 
 through the spectacles of a Vulcanist; and every 
 Neptunist, and every professor of the newest eleva- 
 tion theory, through his own. The contemplation of 
 the world, with all these theorists who are devoted 
 to an exclusive view, has lost its innocence, and the 
 objects no longer appear in their natural purity. 
 
 Logic and Natural Science. 
 
 "Dialectics," said Hegel, "are in fact nothing more 
 than the regulated, methodically cultivated spirit of 
 contradiction which is innate in all men, and which 
 
i88 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 shows itself great as a talent in the distinction be- 
 tween the true and false." 
 
 "Let us only hope," replied Goethe, "that these 
 intellectual arts and dexterities are not frequently 
 misused and employed to make the false true and the 
 true false." 
 
 "That certainly happens," returned Hegel; "but 
 only with people who are mentally diseased." 
 
 "I therefore congratulate myself," said Goethe, 
 "upon the study of nature, which preserves me from 
 such a disease. For here we have to deal with the 
 infinitely and eternally true, which throws off as 
 incapable every one who does not proceed purely 
 and honestly with the treatment and observation of 
 his subject. I am also certain that many a dialectic 
 disease would find a wholesome remedy in the study 
 of nature." 
 
 Contemplation of Nature. 
 
 Spirit supreme ! thou gav'st me, gav'st me all. 
 For which I asked thee. Not in vain hast thou 
 Turned toward me thy countenance in fire. 
 Thou gavest me wide nature for my kingdom, 
 And power to feel it, to enjoy it. Not 
 Cold gaze of wonder gav'st thou me alone. 
 But even into her bosom's depth to look. 
 As it might be the bosom of a friend. 
 The grand array of living things thou mad'st 
 
NATURE— NATURAL HISTORY. 189 
 
 To pass before me : mad'st me know my brothers 
 In silent bush, in water, and in air. 
 And, when the straining storm loud roars and raves 
 Through the dark forest, and the giant pine 
 Root-wrenched tears all the neighbouring branches 
 
 down, 
 And neighbouring stems, and strews the ground with 
 
 wreck, 
 That to their fall the hollow mountain thunders ; 
 Then dost thou guide me to the cave, where safe 
 I learn to know myself, and from my breast 
 Deep and mysterious wonders are unfolded. 
 
 The Metamorphosis of Plants. 
 
 Why should it be, thou ask'st me well, so fair but to 
 confound. 
 
 This garden rich, that spreads its breadth of broidered 
 beauty round ? 
 
 Names, learned names, thou hear'st, a host; a bar- 
 barous-sounding train 
 
 They march, but still, as one comes in, the other 
 leaves the brain. 
 
 And yet, beloved, 'tis one truth, not complex, not 
 profound, 
 
 One sacred simple truth, that rules this maze of tan- 
 gled sound : 
 
I90 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 The ever-varying flowery forms, their thousands are 
 
 but one; 
 There is a law that's like in all, but quite the same in 
 
 none. 
 O my heart's chosen, if the thought that subtly stirs 
 
 the brain. 
 Can teach the tongue, I'll tell thee now this law, nor 
 
 tell in vain ! 
 Behold the plant, by what nice rule, from the dark- 
 groping root 
 Step after step it mounts the scale to blossom bright 
 
 and fruit. 
 Behold the seed, the little seed, with silent plastic 
 
 might. 
 How nurturing Earth the case unfolds, and to the 
 
 genial light. 
 The ever-moving holy light, the delicate frame com- 
 mends. 
 The slight, thin, leafy frame, that soon to gorgeous 
 
 height ascends. 
 Simple the power slept in the seed ; a nascent type is 
 
 there 
 Of all that shall be, nicely wrapt, and swathed with 
 
 curious care ; 
 Half-formed and colourless, root and stem, leaflet and 
 
 leaf there slept. 
 Their charmed life all safe from harm by the arid 
 
 kernel kept, 
 
NATURE— NATURAL HISTORY. 191 
 
 Till gentle dews and genial rain forth-draw the swell- 
 ing might, 
 That shoots elastic from its bed of circumambient 
 
 night. 
 But simple still the primal shoot; as in the boy the man, 
 Here lies of the full tree immense the unexpanded 
 
 plan. 
 But mark, anon an impulse new, knot towered on knot 
 
 behold ! 
 And still as higher mounts the stalk, the primal type 
 
 unrolled 
 Repeats itself; like, not the same ; for in the leafy show 
 The upper floats with ampler pride than that which 
 
 grew below. 
 More deeply cut, and cleft, and carved, and fringed 
 
 in various trim, 
 The parts dispread, once closely twined in the in- 
 ferior limb. 
 Thus step by step the growth proceeds, till perfect on 
 
 the view 
 It bursts, a wonder ever old, a wonder ever new; 
 So giant-ribbed, so straggling free, in swelling breadth 
 
 dilated. 
 As nature's self were weak to check the impulse she 
 
 created. 
 But she is wise; and reining here the pride o' the 
 
 leafy veins, 
 Gently prepares the crowning change, where perfect 
 
 beauty reigns ; 
 
192 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 In narrower cells with milder pulse and calmer flow 
 she lingers, 
 
 And soon the delicate frame displays the working of 
 her fingers. 
 
 Back from the broad and leafy fringe the keen pulsa- 
 tion flows, 
 
 And buoyant now the topmost stem more light and 
 graceful grows ; 
 
 Leafless the tender stalklet's grace shoots eagerly on 
 high, 
 
 And soon a shape of wonder bursts, and fills the 
 studious eye. 
 
 Leaflet with leaflet trimly paired, the counted, the 
 untold. 
 
 Rise, and, with nice adjustment ranged, their spread- 
 ing wings unfold. 
 
 The parted cup unbinds its charge, and free in sunny 
 ray 
 
 The million -coloured crowns aloft their blushing 
 wealth display. 
 
 Thus Nature triumphs in her work, and in full glory 
 shows 
 
 Each step i' the measured scale, through which to 
 such fair height she rose ; 
 
 And wonder still detains the eye, oft as the breeze- 
 stirred blossom. 
 
 On delicate stalklet perched sublime, nods o'er the 
 leafy bosom. 
 
NATURE— NATURAL HISTORY. 193 
 
 But not this gorgeous wealth remains : the strong 
 creative power 
 
 Lives in the core ; the hand divine stirreth the con- 
 scious flower, 
 
 And lo ! with inward-curling force, each fine and 
 slender thread 
 
 Elastic springs to find its mate, and with its like to 
 wed : 
 
 And now they meet, the lovely pairs, and by a law 
 divine, 
 
 In nuptial rings they stand around the consecrated 
 shrine, 
 
 While Hymen hovers near, and wanton breezes odor- 
 ous blow. 
 
 And clouds of genial dust forth roll, and vital foun- 
 tains flow. 
 
 Asunder now, and cased apart, stands every swelling 
 germ. 
 
 Soft -bosomed in the pulpy fruit, that shields its 
 growth from harm ; 
 
 And Nature here the circle ends of her eternal 
 working, 
 
 But still within the old the seed of a new life is 
 lurking. 
 
 Link unto link she adds ; that thus, as countless ages 
 roll, 
 
 Part after part may share the pulse that stirs the 
 mighty whole. 
 
 N 
 
194 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Look now, beloved, on this web of broidered beauty- 
 round, 
 
 And feel it ne'er was woven thus so fair but to con- 
 found. 
 
 Each leafy plant thou seest declares the never-chang- 
 ing laws. 
 
 And every flower, loud and more loud, proclaims the 
 Eternal Cause. 
 
 Nor here alone : once recognised the Godhead's 
 mystic trace, 
 
 Thou'lt see through each most strange disguise the 
 now familiar face ; 
 
 In creeping grub, in winged moth, in various man 
 thou'lt know 
 
 The one great soul that breathes beneath the curious- 
 shifting show. 
 
 Bethink thee, then, how, in the hours that first to- 
 gether drew 
 
 Our hearts, from light acquaintance' germ familiar 
 converse grew. 
 
 From converse sweet by gentle change how potent 
 friendship rose. 
 
 Till perfect love within our breasts both flower and 
 fruitage shows. 
 
 And this, bethink, what woven web of blest emotions 
 grew. 
 
 Phase after phase of various love, the same but ever 
 new ! 
 
NATURE— NATURAL HISTORY. 195 
 
 And learn to enjoy the hour ! pure love still upward 
 
 strives to float 
 To that high sphere where wish to wish, and thought 
 
 responds to thought, 
 Where feeling blent with feeling, raptures thrilled 
 
 with raptures rare, 
 In bonds of a diviner life, unite the blissful pair. 
 
 Ide7n Latine redditum. 
 
 Te turbant, varii flores, te, vita, colores, 
 
 Confundit picti copia multa soli ? 
 Et, cum raucarum procedant agmina vocum, 
 
 Nomina sed trudunt nomina rauca tamen. 
 Omnibus est species diversa, sed omnibus una est, 
 
 Mystica lex flores sacraque norma regit. 
 Sit mihi, quam cupio, felix facundia linguae, 
 
 Arcanum ut possim pandere, vita, tibi. 
 Adspicias tenuis quam gestiat herba vigescens 
 
 E teneris teneros elicuisse gradus. 
 Seminis e grano surgit, simul augmina lenta 
 
 Prompserit e gravid o gleba benigna sinu, 
 Mobilis ut tangat blanda irritamina lucis 
 
 Frons tenera, inveniat laetificumque jubar. 
 Res simplex semen ; perfectae sed tamen herbae, 
 
 Intus erat species, implicitusque typus ; 
 Frons, radix, germenque latent in semine parvo, 
 
 Sed vaga forma tamen, sed color omnis abest. 
 
196 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Corticibus duris sic herba tenella tenetur, 
 
 In sicco grano vita quieta sedet ; 
 Donee lene madens turgescat semen, et ultro 
 
 Emicet e densa nocte, petatque diem ; 
 Sed simplex herbas nascens manet usque figura, 
 
 Sic puer est simplex, si quis adultus erit. 
 Jam culmum nova vis effert ; mox augmine nodi 
 
 Excipiunt nodos, et loca celsa petunt ; ' 
 Sed simili semper forma, varia sed eadem, 
 
 Herba viget, primum pandere lasta typum. 
 Jamque una frondes variantur imagine ; jamque 
 
 E glomere exserti per spatia ampla patent ; 
 Pluribus et sectis iteratur partibus herba, 
 
 Et frons in frondes finditur usque novas. 
 Sic amat in vastos arbor se pandere ramos 
 
 Et multis (mirum !) luxuriare modis. 
 Naturam credas nullos sibi ponere fines, 
 
 Ubere tam pleno magnificoque tumet. 
 Sed hie grata sibi sapiens moderamina figit, 
 
 Et gradibus lentis egregiora petit ; 
 Jam magis et plaeido tenuantur sanguine vense, 
 
 Jam tenuata viget tota figura magis. 
 Surgit dein gracilis sine fronde pedunculus; et mox 
 
 Mirantem floris fabrica mira capit. 
 Nam petala in pulehrum vis vivida digerit orbem, 
 
 Plurima, quae numeres, quas numeroque earent ; 
 Cumque calix presso refugus se solvent axe, 
 
 Panditur in plenum picta corona diem. 
 
NATURE— NATURAL HISTORY. 197 
 
 Sic splendet demum summo Natura triumpho 
 
 Et gradibus cumulat leniter apta gradus ; 
 Ut stupeas, iterumque novus stupor occupet ossa, 
 
 Flos quoties summa pendulus arce tremit. 
 Sed non usque manet prsenuntia gloria floris ; 
 
 Quin genetrice dei tangitur ille manu, 
 Contrahiturque citus ; tenui jam stamina filo 
 
 Verticibus flexis foedera sancta petunt ; 
 Et jam cum pare par dulces irritat amores, 
 
 Circumstatque aras fervida turba sacras ; 
 Ipse Hymenasus adest, gratique feruntur odores, 
 
 Sparsaque vitali pulvere fila rubent. 
 Jam se disjungunt; et germina singula turgent, 
 
 Quae tenero in gremio mollia poma tegunt. 
 Et hie vivificum genetrix vis conficit orbem, 
 
 Excipit at sollers vincula rupta manus ; 
 Scilicet ut longo producta propagine vivant 
 
 Corpore cum toto singula membra simul. 
 Adspice nunc varios flores, nunc, vita, colores, 
 
 Te turbat picti copia nulla soli ; 
 Mystica nunc reserata patet lex sacraque norma, 
 
 Clamat et ex herbis vox manifesta Dei. 
 Ast hie si pateat sacri tibi litera libri, 
 
 Mutata specie, linea nota manet ; 
 Sive eruca trahat larvam, seu papilionis 
 
 Ala micet, vultus seu sibi mutet homo. 
 Sic nosterque accrevit amor ; cognoscere vultus 
 
 Fons erat; e dulci dulcior usus erat ; 
 
198 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Vis et amicitias dein vinxit pectora ; donee 
 
 Protulit et flores, pomaque firmus amor. 
 Hcec reputa; reputa blandi solamina amoris 
 
 Ouot fuerint nobis, quam variata Venus. 
 Praesentemque diem liba ; sit et una voluntas 
 
 Nobis — hie fructus summus amoris erit — 
 Unaque mens, ut quos dulcis eoncordia junxit 
 
 Cum pare par Iceti regna serena petant. 
 
ART 
 
 
A R T. 
 
 Beauty. 
 
 From Oeser I learned that the ideal of beauty con- 
 sists in simplicity and repose — whence it plainly 
 follows that no young man can produce a master- 
 piece. It is a great happiness when one has not 
 had to arrive at this profound truth through a sad 
 series of pretentious blunders. 
 
 The Line of Beauty. 
 
 Hogarth has given us the variations of the line 
 of beauty from the extreme of distortion in living 
 creatures to the phenomena of curvature in inorganic 
 matter. The true point of the line of beauty is the 
 LINE OF LOVE, having strength on the one side and 
 weakness on the other. Love is the mean in which 
 these extremes unite and produce perfection. 
 
 Beauty is at once the ultimate principle and the 
 highest aim of art. 
 
202 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 A rt — Nature — Raphael. 
 
 The business of art is to give an external presen- 
 tation of the natural. The purely natural, when it 
 harmonises with our moral sentiments, is called 
 naive. The natural, of course, is always in one sense 
 the real and the actual ; but the actual is not always 
 the natural. Apart from the moral sentiment, the 
 actual is the common, the vulgar, the low, or the 
 coarse. 
 
 The spirit of art is essentially noble ; and therefore 
 the great artist is never afraid of the low or the com- 
 mon, knowing, as he does, how to handle it nobly. 
 He is an absolute sovereign, who has a right to show 
 his sovereignty occasionally even in his whims. 
 There is a spirit of daring, also, about a great genius, 
 which loves to defy arbitrary restraints, and which 
 will be gratified. Of all modern artists, Raphael is 
 the most perfect. He is thoroughly 7taivej with him 
 the actual never comes into collision with the moral 
 or the holy. In the most sacred compositions, he 
 can bring in Moors and monkeys playing with apples 
 on a camel's back — a whole world of the lowest, with- 
 out anyhow trenching on the highest. 
 
 Huinoiir in Art. 
 
 Humour is one of the elements of genius, ad- 
 mirable as an adjunct, but as soon as it becomes 
 dominant, only a surrogate for genius. Humour in 
 
ART, 203 
 
 this illegitimate form accompanies the decline of art, 
 corrupts it, and then destroys it. 
 
 Head-knowledge. 
 
 Unless the heart is in perfect and continuous sym- 
 pathy with the head, the comprehension of any work 
 of art is impossible. 
 
 A rt and the Public. 
 
 The public is large : true judgment, true feeling, 
 are not quite so rare as one believes ; only the artist 
 ought not to demand an unconditional approval of 
 his work. Unconditional approval is always the least 
 valuable ; conditional those who are eager for appro- 
 val are seldom content with. In life, as in art, I 
 know well a person must take counsel with himself 
 when he purposes to do or to produce anything ; but 
 when it is produced or done, he must listen with 
 attention to the voices of a number, and with a little 
 practice, out of these many votes he will be able to 
 collect a perfect judgment. The few who could 
 themselves pronounce one, for the most part hold 
 their peace. 
 
 Art and Imitation. 
 
 Imitation is born with us. What should be imi- 
 tated is not easy to discover. The excellent is rarely 
 found, more rarely valued. The height charms us, 
 
204 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 the Steps to it not so; with the summit in our eyes, 
 we love to walk along the plain. It is but a part of 
 art that can be taught ; the artist needs the whole. 
 Who knows the half speaks much, and is always 
 wTong; who knows the whole inclines to act, and 
 speaks seldom or late. The former have no secrets 
 and no force ; the instruction they can give is like 
 baked bread, savoury and satisfying for a single day ; 
 but flour cannot be sown, and seed-corn ought not to 
 be ground. 
 
 Music. 
 
 Music is sacred or profane. Sacred music is that 
 species which is most completely in accordance with 
 the dignity of the art, and has the greatest influence 
 upon life — an influence which is exercised over a 
 much greater range of ages and epochs than to the 
 other arts can belong ; of the profane or secular 
 species, cheerfulness should always be the dominant 
 characteristic. 
 
 Painting. 
 
 Painting is of all the arts the one which may be 
 taken most lightly and easily. The reason of this 
 lies in the material and objects with which it works. 
 Then again, we must consider that a skilful piece of 
 drawing, though utterly destitute of genius, com- 
 mands admiration alike from the cultivated and the 
 
ART. 205 
 
 uncultivated. Here truthfulness in the colours, sur- 
 faces, and natural selection of visible objects is 
 pleasant ; and besides, as the eye anyhow is accus- 
 tomed to look on both fair and foul, a deformity, 
 even an abortion, is not so offensive to it as a discord 
 to the ears. We set some value on the worst draw^- 
 ing, because we are accustomed to see much worse 
 things in reality. The painter, accordingly, needs 
 only to be to some small extent an artist, and he finds 
 forthwith a greater audience, who stand on the same 
 level with him, than does the musician. And in many 
 cases a painter, however feeble in genuine artistic 
 instinct, can work by himself; whereas the inferior 
 musician must associate himself with others, in order 
 that he may produce some effect by acting in concert 
 with them. 
 
 What mid How. 
 
 The WHAT in a work of art interests men more than 
 the how: that they can appropriate in detail; this 
 they cannot grasp as a whole. Hence comes the 
 habit of dwelling on particular passages, along with 
 which, no doubt, the total impression comes so far 
 into play, though quite unconsciously to the approv- 
 ing critic. 
 
 Art and Inspiration. 
 
 To blow is not to play the flute ; the fingers must 
 command the stops. 
 
2o6 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 An yEsthetical Whole. 
 
 Few men of any modern nation have a proper sense 
 of an assthetical whole : they praise and' blame by 
 parts; they are charmed by passages; and who has 
 greater reason to rejoice in this than actors, since the. 
 stage is ever but a patched and piecemeal matter ?^ 
 
 Art and Nature. 
 
 In nature we never see anything isolated, but every- 
 thing in connection with something else which is before 
 it, beside it, under it, and over it. A single object, I 
 grant, may strike us as particularly picturesque : it is 
 not, however, the object alone which produces this 
 effect, but it is the connection in which we see it, 
 with that which is beside, behind, and above it, all 
 of which contributes to that effect. 
 
 Thus during a walk I may meet with an oak, the 
 picturesque effect of which surprises me. But if I 
 represent it alone, it will perhaps no longer appear 
 to me as it did, because that is wanting which con- 
 tributed to and enhanced the picturesque effect in 
 nature. Thus, too, a wood may appear beautiful 
 through the influence of one particular sky, one par- 
 ticular light, and one particular situation of the sun. 
 But if I omit all these in my drawing, it will perhaps 
 
 1 Compare here the speech of the manager in the Vorspiel to 
 Faust, beginning " Besonders aber lass genug geschehen." 
 
ART. 207 
 
 appear without any force, and as something indifferent 
 to which the proper charm is wanting. Further, 
 there is in nature nothing beautiful which is not pro- 
 duced {inotivirt) as true in conformity with the laws 
 of nature. In order that that truth of nature may ap- 
 pear true also in the picture, it must be accounted for 
 by the introduction of the influential circumstances. 
 
 I find by a brook well-formed stones, the parts of 
 which, exposed to the air, are in a picturesque man- 
 ner covered with green moss. Now it is not alone 
 the moisture of the water which has caused this for- 
 mation of moss ; but perhaps a northerly aspect, or 
 the shade of the trees and bushes, that has co-operated 
 in this formation at this part of the brook. If I omit 
 these influential causes in my picture, it will be with- 
 out truth, and without the proper convincing power. 
 
 Thus the situation of a tree, the kind of soil beneath 
 it, and other trees behind and beside it, have a great 
 influence on its formation. An oak which stands 
 exposed to the wind on the western summit of a 
 rocky hill, will acquire quite a different form from 
 that of one which grows below on the moist ground 
 of a sheltered valley. Both may be beautiful in their 
 kind, but they will have a very different character, and 
 can, therefore, in an artistically conceived landscape, 
 be used only for such a situation as they occupied in 
 nature. And, therefore, the delineation of surround- 
 ing objects, by which any particular situation is ex- 
 pressed, is of high importance to the artist. On the 
 
2o8 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Other hand, it would be foolish to attempt to represent 
 all those prosaic casualties which have had as little 
 influence upon the form of the principal object as 
 upon its picturesque effect for the moment. 
 
 Art: a Subject. 
 
 What can be more important than the subject, and 
 what is all the science of art without it ? All talent 
 is wasted, if the subject is unsuitable. It is because 
 modern artists have no worthy subjects that people 
 are so hampered in all the art of these times. I 
 myself have not been able to renounce my modern- 
 ness. Very few artists are clear on this point. For 
 instance, they paint my " Fisherman" as the subject 
 of a picture, and do not think that it cannot be painted. 
 In this ballad nothing is attempted, but that charm 
 in water which tempts me to bathe in summer — and 
 how can that be painted 1 
 
 Mannerism. 
 
 Mannerism is always longing to have done, and has 
 no true enjoyment in work. A genuine really great 
 talent, on the other hand, has its greatest happiness 
 in execution. Roos, for instance, is unwearied in 
 drawing the hair and wool of his goats and sheep ; 
 and you see by his infinite details that he enjoyed the 
 purest felicity in doing his work, and had no wish to 
 bring it to an end. 
 
ART. 209 
 
 Inferior talents do not enjoy art for its own sake ; 
 while at work they have nothing before their eyes but 
 the profit they hope to make when they have done. 
 With such worldly views and tendencies nothing 
 great was ever produced. 
 
 Religion and Art. 
 
 I talked of the mistake of those artists who make 
 religion art, while for them art should rather be a 
 religion. Religion, we agreed, stands in the same re- 
 lation to art as any other of the higher interests in life. 
 It is merely to be looked on as a material, with similar 
 claims to any other vital material. Faith and want of 
 faith are not the organs with which a work of art is 
 to be apprehended. On the contrary, human powers 
 and capacities of a totally different character are re- 
 quired. Art must address itself to those organs with 
 which we apprehend it ; otherwise it misses its effect. 
 A religious material may be a good subject for art, 
 but only in so far as it possesses general human in- 
 terest. The Virgin with the Child is on this account 
 an excellent subject, and one that may be treated a 
 hundred times, and always seen again with pleasure. 
 
 Love of Display in Art. 
 
 The misfortune is that nobody cares to enjoy what 
 has been produced by others, but every one wants to 
 reproduce on his own account. There is, besides, no 
 o 
 
2IO THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 earnestness to approach the whole, no willingness to 
 do anything for the sake of the whole; but each one 
 tries to make his own self observable, and to exhibit 
 it as much as possible to the world. This false ten- 
 dency is shown everywhere, and people imitate the 
 modern musical virtuosi, who do not select those 
 pieces which give the audience pure musical enjoy- 
 ment, so much as those in which they can gain 
 admiration by the dexterity they have acquired. 
 Everywhere there is the individual who wants to 
 show himself off to advantage — nowhere the honest 
 effort to make himself subservient to the whole. 
 
 Beauty and Nature. 
 
 " I cannot help laughing at the assthetical folks," 
 said Goethe, "who torment themselves in endeavour- 
 ing, by some abstract terms, to reduce to a concep- 
 tion that inexpressible thing to which we give the 
 name of beauty. Beauty is a primeval phenomenon, 
 which never makes an independent appearance, but 
 the reflection of which is visible in a thousand differ- 
 ent utterances of the creative mind, and is as various 
 as Nature herself." 
 
 " I have often heard it said that Nature is always 
 beautiful," said I ; " that she causes the artists to 
 despair, because they are seldom capable of reaching 
 her completely." 
 
 " Nature," said Goethe, " in many of her works re- 
 veals a charm of beauty which no human art can hope 
 
ART. 211 
 
 to reach ; but I am by no means of opinion that she is 
 beautiful in all her aspects. Her intentions are indeed 
 always good, but not so the conditions which are re- 
 quired to make her manifest herself completely. 
 
 " Thus, the oak is a tree which may be very beau- 
 tiful ; but how many favourable circumstances must 
 concur before Nature can succeed in producing one 
 truly beautiful.? If an oak grow in the midst of a 
 forest, encompassed with large neighbouring trunks, 
 its tendency will be always upwards, towards free air 
 and light ; only small weak branches will grow on its 
 sides, and these will in the course of a century decay 
 and fall off. But if it has at last succeeded in reach- 
 ing the free air with its summit, it will then rest in its 
 upward tendency, and begin to spread itself from its 
 sides and form a crown. But it is by this time already 
 passed its middle age, its many years of upward striv- 
 ing have consumed its freshest powers, and its present 
 endeavour to put forth its strength by increasing in 
 breadth will not now have its proper results. When 
 full grown, it will be high, strong, and slender- 
 stemmed, but still without such a proportion between 
 its crown and its stem as would render it beautiful. 
 
 " The main point," continued Goethe, " is that the 
 race be pure, and that man have not applied his mu- 
 tilating hand. A horse with its mane and tail cut, 
 a hound with cropped ears, a tree from which the 
 strongest branches have been lopped and the rest cut 
 into a spherical form, and above all, a young girl 
 
212 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 whose youthful form has been spoiled and deformed 
 by stays, are things from which good taste revolts, 
 and which merely occupy a place in the Philistine's 
 catechism of beauty." 
 
 Schools of Art. 
 
 A school of art, or of anything else, is to be looked 
 on as a single individual, who keeps talking to him- 
 self for a hundred years, and feels an extreme satis- 
 faction with his own circle of favourite ideas, be they 
 ever so silly. 
 
 Modern Art. 
 
 In the present advanced state of art productions are 
 possible which are null, and yet not bad : null be- 
 cause they have no contents ; not bad because the 
 artist worked under the influence of good models, 
 which bring execution generally up to a certain level 
 of excellence. 
 
 Portrait-Painters. 
 
 Portrait-painters are a class of artists for whom I 
 have always felt great pity. Seldom or never does it 
 happen that one is content with the portrait of a per- 
 son with whom he is intimately acquainted. What 
 we are not accustomed to demand from other per- 
 sons, that we are forward to demand from portrait- 
 painters — the impossible. They are expected to 
 
ART. 213 
 
 put into their picture whatever this spectator or the 
 other, from his peculiar point of view, may expect to 
 find in the likeness; they are called upon to represent 
 not only the man as they may happen to see him, but 
 as anybody may happen to have seen him. I am 
 therefore not at all surprised, when I find, as I often 
 do, that such artists become unimpressible, indiffer- 
 ent, and obstinate. 
 
 Palladio. 
 
 The more Palladio is studied, the more incalcu- 
 lable will appear the genius, the mastery, the wealth, 
 the versatility, and the grace of this man. 
 
 Training and Discipline. 
 
 Few feelings are more pleasant than that of having, 
 by good advice or otherwise, contributed to the scien- 
 tific training of a fine natural genius ; and friendly 
 help of this kind is more important at the present day 
 than in the old times, when every beginner started 
 with a firm faith in the school and in the rules of 
 his art, and willingly submitted himself to whatever 
 drudgery might belong to the grammar of his pro- 
 fession — a submission of which the aspiring young 
 artist of the present day generally will know nothing. 
 The German artists, these thirty years back, are 
 living in the conceit that a happy genius can train 
 itself; and a host of passionate admirers and ama- 
 
214 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 teurs, equally destitute of all solid foundation, are at 
 hand to confirm them in this delusion. How often 
 have I not heard the praise of a young artist trum- 
 peted in these terms — he owes everything to himself? 
 This I hear for the most part with all patience ; but 
 now and then I add sharply — and his work is 
 accordingly. 
 
 Ideality — Claude Lorraine. 
 
 Claude Lorraine knew the real world down to its 
 minutest details ; and he used it as the means to 
 express to the world his own beautiful soul. And 
 this indeed is true ideality — the ideality which loves 
 to make use of the material presented to it by nature 
 in such a fashion that, the ideal truth thus embodied, 
 the matter and the spirit, is accepted as the actual. 
 
 Personality. 
 
 In art and poetry personal genius is everything ; 
 yet we have seen amongst modern critics and con- 
 noisseurs certain persons not of the strongest type of 
 intellect, who will have it that in a great work of art 
 the personality of the artist is only a small adjunct in 
 the great result. But the fact is, in the great work 
 the great person is always present as the great factor ; 
 only, to appreciate the presence of a great somebody 
 in any work of genius, the person who would appre- 
 ciate must himself be a somebody. 
 
ART. 215 
 
 Training and Disciplitie. 
 
 I said that I had lately, in his ' Italian Travels,' 
 read of a picture by Correggio, which represents 
 a " weaning," and in which the infant Christ in 
 Mary's lap stands in doubt between His mother's 
 breast and a pear held before Him, and does not 
 know which of the two to choose. 
 
 "Ay," said Goethe, "there is a little picture for 
 you ! There are mind, naivete, sensuousness, all 
 together. The sacred subject is endowed with a 
 universally human interest, and stands as a symbol 
 for a period of life we must all pass through. Such 
 a picture is immortal, because it grasps backwards at 
 the earliest times of humanity, and forward at the 
 latest. On the contrary, if Christ were painted suf- 
 fering the little children to come unto Him, it would 
 be a picture that expressed nothing — at any rate, 
 nothing of importance." 
 
 Art and Practice. 
 
 Practice and habit must in every art fill up the 
 voids which genius and temper in their fluctuations 
 will so often leave. 
 
 A rt and Nature. 
 
 I have never observed nature with a view to poeti- 
 cal production ; but because my early drawing of 
 
2i6 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 landscapes, and my later studies in natural science, 
 led me to a constant, close observation of natural 
 objects, I have gradually learned nature by heart, 
 even to the minutest details ; so that, when I need 
 anything as a poet, it is at my command, and I can- 
 not easily sin against truth. Schiller had not this 
 observation of nature. The localities of Switzerland, 
 which he used in " William Tell," were all related to 
 him by me ; but he had such a wonderful" mind, that 
 even from hearsay he could make something that 
 possessed reality. 
 
 We say to the artist. Study nature ! But it is not 
 
 such an easy matter from the trivial to eliminate the 
 
 noble, and from the amorphous to conjure out the 
 beautiful. 
 
 Art— the Dilettante. 
 
 It is the very nature of the dilettanti that they 
 have no idea of the difficulties which lie in a subject, 
 and always wish to undertake something for which 
 they have no capacity. 
 
 Art and Superstition. 
 
 Superstition is part of the poetry of life; therefore 
 superstition can do the artist no harm. 
 
ART. 217 
 
 Art : its completeness. 
 
 A work of art will always be defective when any of 
 the functions that go to make a complete man have 
 not presided at its production. The abysses of pre- 
 sentiment, a clear and firm intuition of the present, 
 mathematical depth, physical accuracy, height of 
 reason, sharpness of understanding, a quick and fer- 
 vid fancy, a loving joy in the natural and healthy de- 
 lights of the senses, no faculty and no function can be 
 dispensed with, if that fruitful and profitable mastery 
 of the moment is to take place, out of which alone a 
 work of art of whatsoever character can spring into 
 existence. 
 
 Art and Religion. 
 
 Art rests on a sort of religious sense, or a deep- 
 rooted earnestness of character; and this earnestness 
 it is which so readily leads it to form a union with 
 religion. Religion, on the other hand, requires no 
 feeling for art ; it rests on its own basis ; and neither 
 imparts artistic inspiration nor even cultivates taste.^ 
 
 1 The most striking example of this is in Scotland, where a 
 form of extreme Protestantism, founded on rigid dogmatism 
 and fervid moral earnestness, assumed an attitude, the natural 
 result of a historical development, positively hostile to all sesthet- 
 ical culture. But this unnatural divorce between the holy and 
 the beautiful, aided by various softening influences of the pres- 
 ent century, is fast receding from the sympathy of the more 
 cultivated classes in this country.— J. S. B. 
 
2i8 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Art and H lima Ji Nature. 
 
 Man is not only a thinking, he is also a feeling' 
 animal. He is a whole, a unity of many wonderfully 
 connected powers ; and to this complex unity, not in 
 its parts, but as a whole, every work of art must ad- 
 dress itself; corresponding, like the chord in music, 
 to the rich unity, and the curiously unified manifold- 
 ness of which human nature is made up. 
 
 Real and Ideal. 
 
 The bird flies in the air with proper zest 
 When it looks down upon an earthly nest. 
 
 Unity in Multiplicity. 
 
 For evermore exists the one, that still 
 Is branched into the many, and still is one, 
 And one that knows no second. For the one 
 Find thou the many, and feel the many as one. 
 And thou hast learned where all true art begins, 
 And where it ends. 
 
 Silent Work. 
 
 Artist, let thy words be few. 
 To thy shaping tool be true. 
 And work thy soul from day to day, 
 Like a breath into the clay ! 
 
ART. 219 
 
 Art and Religion — Diana of the Ephesians. 
 
 At Ephesus a goldsmith sate 
 In his worl<shop worl<ing stoutly, 
 What best he could, both air and late, 
 With practised hand devoutly. 
 He from a boy ofttime had knelt 
 Before the great Diana's shrine ; 
 Ofttime at home with fingers fine 
 Had chased the curious-figured belt. 
 With strange wild beasts of every kind 
 Beneath her nurturing breast to bind, 
 Well pleased his talent to employ 
 Even as the father taught his boy ; 
 And now a master grown, he plied 
 His father's art with pious pride. 
 
 One day as he worked at his job 
 He heard a cry from a noisy mob, 
 Saying that only one God did reign, 
 Somewhere fancied, nowhere seen, 
 At the back of a silly mortal's brain, — 
 The true God this, not his great queen. 
 That peoples with life earth's wide domain. 
 
 He quietly bade his men go out. 
 To see what all the noise was about. 
 And then went on with his graving-tool 
 With stags and hounds to fill the space 
 
THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 About the knee, according to rule ; 
 Then prayed to Pallas for her good grace 
 To top the form with a worthy face. 
 
 Thus he ; and you, a man of pith, 
 Of course are free to choose your creed ; 
 Swear by what god may help your need, 
 But leave Diana to the smith. ^ 
 
 Good Advice. 
 
 There comes a day with you and me 
 When all things with us disagree; 
 We hate ourselves, our friends we hate, 
 And doubt all good, and rail at fate. 
 Now, if in life such things may be, 
 Should Art from all ill lunes be free ? 
 Therefore, when you're not in the vein. 
 
 1 In this poem, as in the " Bride of Corinth" and others, Goethe 
 has shown how well he can appreciate the polytheistic point of 
 view ; this appreciation is the result of the many-sided sym- 
 pathy which belonged to his rich human nature. It seems to 
 prove also, no doubt, that if he had lived at Ephesus when the 
 Gospel was preached there, his artistic instincts would have led 
 him to prefer the old physico-aesthetical truth that lay in Cybele 
 to the new moral truth that was preached in the name of Christ ; 
 but to conclude from this, as some have done, that he did not 
 now appreciate what Christianity has done for the world, would 
 be illegitimate, and lead to an inference contradicted not only 
 by many distinct utterances in his works, but founded on a total 
 misconception of the mental constitution of the man. — J. S. B. 
 
ART. 221 
 
 Omit to spur the jaded brain ; 
 The tide that ebbs will flow again ; 
 From rest to-day you wisely borrow 
 A double strength to bless to-morrow. 
 
 Taste and Genius. 
 
 Taste and genius, why do they never pull kindly 
 
 together? 
 Taste is afraid of the power, genius spurneth the rein. 
 
 Grace and Stretigth. 
 ( To a Skater. ) 
 
 Wouldst thou be deft in thywheeling, first learn to be 
 
 firm in thy footing ; 
 Only from fulness of strength Grace may be born to 
 
 the light. 
 
WOMEN 
 
 ^i« Sittlitbhdt tnngibt mit tmtx ^mxtt 
 'Bns Mnxit h'lchi btxittiM^t <S«sdjUt^t. 
 
WOMEN. 
 
 The Model Wife. 
 
 To the man who knows the world, who under- 
 stands what he should do in it, what he should hope 
 from it, nothing can be more desirable than meeting 
 with a wife who will everywhere co-operate with 
 him; who will everywhere prepare his way for him ; 
 whose diligence takes up what his must leave ; whose 
 occupation spreads itself on every side, while his 
 must travel forward on its single path. What a 
 heaven had I figured for myself beside Theresa ! 
 Not the heaven of an enthusiastic bliss, but of a sure 
 life on earth ; order in prosperity, courage in adver- 
 sity, care for the smallest, and a spirit capable of 
 comprehending and managing the greatest. Oh, I 
 saw in her the qualities which, when developed, 
 make such women as we find in history, whose ex- 
 cellence appears to us far preferable to that of men : 
 this clearness of view ; this expertness in all emer- 
 p 
 
226 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 gencies; this sureness in details, which brings the 
 whole so accurately out, although they never seem to 
 think of it. 
 
 Love. 
 
 Alas ! she was not lovely when she loved ; the 
 greatest misery which can befall a woman. 
 
 Woineft and Children. 
 
 What in us the women leave uncultivated, children 
 cultivate, when we retain them near us. 
 
 Women — Mothers. 
 
 Nothing is more charming than to see a mother 
 with a child upon her arm ; nothing is more reverend 
 than a mother among many children. 
 
 Womafis Sphere — The FaiJiily Home. 
 And where is there any station higher than the 
 ordering of the house ? While the husband has to 
 vex himself with outward matters ; while he has to 
 gather wealth and to protect it; while perhaps he 
 takes a share in the administration of the state, and 
 there constantly depends on circumstances, ruling 
 nothing, I may say, while he conceives that he is 
 ruling much, compelled to be only politic where he 
 
WOMEN. 227 
 
 would willingly be reasonable, to dissemble where he 
 would be open, to be false where he would be up- 
 right ; while thus, for the sake of an object which he 
 never reaches, he must every moment sacrifice the 
 first of objects, harmony with himself, — a reasonable 
 housewife is actually governing in the interior of her 
 family ; has the comfort and activity of every person 
 in it to provide for and make possible. What is the 
 highest happiness of us mortals, if not to execute what 
 we consider right and good ; to be really masters of 
 the means conducive to our aims? And where 
 should or can our first and nearest aims be but 
 within the house? All those indispensable and still- 
 to-be-renewed supplies, where do we expect, do we 
 require to find them, if it* is not in the place where 
 we arise and where we go to sleep, — where kitchen 
 and cellar, and every species of accommodation for 
 ourselves and ours, are to be always ready ? What 
 unvarying activity is needed to conduct this con- 
 stantly recurring series in unbroken living order ! 
 How few are the men to whom it is given to return 
 regularly like a star ; to command their day as they 
 command their night; to form for themselves their 
 household instruments ; to sow and to reap, to gain 
 and to expend, and to travel round their circle with 
 perpetual success and peace and love ! It is when a 
 woman has attained this inward mastery, that she 
 truly makes the husband, whom she loves, a master : 
 her attention will acquire all sorts of knowledge for 
 
228 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 her ; her activity will turn them all to profit. Thus 
 is she dependent upon no one ; and she procures her 
 husband genuine independence, that which is interior 
 and domestic : whatever he possesses he beholds 
 secured — what he earns, well employed ; and thus he 
 can direct his mind to lofty objects, and if fortune 
 favours, he may act in the state the same character 
 which becomes his wife so well at home. 
 
 Marriages. 
 
 It is interior disagreements only that affright me ; 
 a frame that does not fit what it is meant to hold ; 
 much pomp and little real enjoyment; wealth and 
 avarice, nobility and rudeness, youth and pedantry, 
 poverty and ceremonies, these are the things which 
 would annihilate me, however it may please the 
 world to stamp and rate them. 
 
 Wives. 
 
 Indeed men's understandings give their suffrages 
 for household wives; but their hearts and their imag- 
 inations long for other qualities ; and we housekeep- 
 ing people can ill stand a rivalry with the beautiful 
 and the lovely. 
 
 Marriages — Suitable and U^tsui table. 
 
 Nothing gives a greater loose to people's tongues, 
 than when a marriage happens which they can de- 
 
WOMEN. 229 
 
 nominate unsuitable: and yet the unsuitable are far 
 more common than the suitable; for, alas ! with most 
 marriages, it is not long till things assume a very- 
 piteous look. The confusion of ranks by marriage 
 can be called unsuitable, only when the one party 
 is unable to participate in the manner of existence, 
 which is native, habitual, and which at length grows 
 absolutely necessary, to the other. The different 
 classes have different ways of living, which they 
 cannot change or communicate to one another; and 
 this is the reason why connections such as these in 
 general were better not be formed. Yet exceptions, 
 and exceptions of the happiest kind, are possible. 
 Thus, too, the marriage of a young woman with a 
 man advanced in life is generally unsuitable ; yet I 
 have seen some such turn out extremely well. For 
 me, I know but of one kind of marriage that would be 
 entirely unsuitable; that in which I should be called 
 upon to make a show and manage ceremonies : I 
 had rather give my hand to the son of any honest 
 farmer in the neighbourhood. 
 
 Marriage. 
 
 He who attacks marriage, he who by word or 
 deed sets himself to undermine this foundation of 
 all moral society, he must settle the matter with me ; 
 and if I don't bring him to reason, then I have 
 nothing to do with him. Marriage is the beginning 
 
230 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 and the summit of all civilisation. It makes the 
 savage mild ; and the most highly cultivated man 
 has no better means of demonstrating his mildness. 
 Marriage must be indissoluble, for it brings so much 
 general happiness, that any individual case of un- 
 happiness that may be connected with it cannot come 
 into account. 
 
 What do people mean when they talk about un- 
 happiness ? It is not so much unhappiness as impa- 
 tience that from time to time possesses men, and then 
 they choose to call themselves miserable. Let the 
 moment of irritation but pass over, and people will 
 find cause enough to think themselves happy that a 
 state which has already existed so long still exists. 
 For separation there can be no sufficient reason. In 
 our present human condition there is so much of 
 sorrow and joy interwoven, that it is beyond all cal- 
 culation what obligations a married pair lie under to 
 one another. It is an infinite debt which it requires 
 an eternity to cancel. Disagreeable it may be, I 
 admit, sometimes : that is just as it should be. Are 
 we not really married to our conscience, of which we 
 might often be willing to rid ourselves because it 
 often annoys us more than any man or woman can 
 possibly annoy one another? 
 
 Wisdom of Women. 
 A noble man is by a well-dropt word 
 Of women wisely led. 
 
WOMEN. 231 
 
 Wo7nen. 
 If thou wouldst hear what seemly is and fit, 
 Inquire of noble women ; they can tell ; 
 Who in life's common usage hold their place 
 By g-raceful deed, and aptly chosen word. 
 Propriety as with a wall surrounds 
 Their delicate sense, which shrinks from forward 
 
 touch, 
 And where rude handling is no woman lives : 
 Ask both the sexes, both have one reply — 
 For freedom he, and she for chaste restraint. 
 
 Woman : her Persistency. 
 
 Pity sits throned with woman. For a man 
 The best that is will train his heart to look 
 On savage deeds unmoved, and what at first 
 He hated, end by honouring as a law, 
 Till monstered from boon nature's use he grows 
 Into a thing scarce human. But a woman 
 Lives to herself, as her pure purpose shaped. 
 In singleness of heart. For good or ill 
 She is to-day what she was yesterday 
 And will remain to-morrow. 
 
 Woman. 
 
 I would not blame the gods ; but sooth to say. 
 The state of womankind is pitiful : 
 
232 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 At home and in the camp the man is master, 
 And cast abroad he knows to fight his way. 
 Possessions, honour, victory, are his : 
 And, when he dies, he dies as heroes die. 
 But woman, oh, within what narrow cirque 
 Her fate is bounded ! an unfeeling lord 
 With meek submissive service to obey 
 Is her mere duty ; and divorced from home 
 She wanders like a waif upon the wave 
 Unfriended. 
 
EDUCATION AND CULTURE 
 
 ungcbjiss ; m ttxt^t Wimxnd^e, stall ^xube gu bl«b«n. 
 
EDUCATION AND CULTURE. 
 
 Education. 
 
 Nothing is worse than a teacher who knows only 
 as much as he has to impart to the hearer. He 
 who would teach others may oftentimes wisely sup- 
 press the best of what he knows ; but he must not 
 deal in half-knowledge. Well, but you will ask, 
 Where are such teachers to be found ? The answer 
 is easy. Go to the place where the thing you wish to 
 know is native ; your best teacher is there. Where 
 the thing you wish to know is so dominant that you 
 must breathe its very atmosphere, there teaching is 
 most thorough, and learning is most easy. You 
 acquire a language most readily in the country where 
 it is spoken ; you study mineralogy best among 
 miners ; and so with everything else. 
 
 Utility. 
 
 The use of a thing is only a part of its significance. 
 To know anything thoroughly, to have the full com- 
 mand of it in all its applications, we must study it 
 
236 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 on its own account, independently of any special 
 application. 
 
 The Beginning. 
 
 All beginning is difficult, says the proverb. True 
 enough, no doubt, in a certain sense ; but with a 
 more comprehensive truth one can say, All beginning 
 is easy; and the highest steps on the ladder are the 
 most difficult to reach. 
 
 The Best Educatio7z. 
 
 The best type of education is that of the Hydriotes. 
 As islanders and seamen they take their children 
 with them from their earliest years into the ship, and 
 let them creep their way up, from stage to stage of 
 the naval art. As soon as they are able to do sub- 
 stantial service, they are allowed their share in the 
 profits of the trade ; and in this way is formed a 
 class of persons who are at once the most daring 
 seamen and the most successful merchants. In such 
 a school the naval heroes are bred, who sail up in 
 their fire-ship right upon the admiral's ship of the 
 foe, and grapple with it hand to hand. 
 
 The True Scholar. 
 
 The true scholar learns to develop the unknown 
 from the known, and thus step by step approaches to 
 the platform of his master. 
 
EDUCATION AND CULTURE. 237 
 
 Early Impressions. 
 
 "Let no one think that he can conquer the first 
 impressions of his youth. If he has grown up in 
 enviable freedom, surrounded with beautiful and 
 noble objects, in constant intercourse with worthy 
 men ; if his masters have taught him what he need- 
 ed first to know, for comprehending what remained 
 more easily ; if he has never learned anything which 
 he requires to unlearn; if his first operations have 
 been so guided, that, without altering any of his 
 habits, he can more easily produce what is excellent 
 in future ; — then such a one will lead a purer, more 
 perfect, and happier life, than another man who has 
 wasted the force of his youth in opposition and error. 
 A great deal is said and written about education; 
 yet I meet with very few who can comprehend and 
 transfer to practice the simple yet vast idea, which 
 includes within itself all others connected with the 
 subject." 
 
 " That may well be true," said Wilhelm ; " for the 
 generality of men are limited enough in their concep- 
 tions to suppose that every other should be fashioned 
 by education according to the pattern of themselves. 
 Happy, then, are those whom fate takes charge of, 
 and educates according to their several natures ! " 
 
 " Fate," said the other, smiling, " is an excellent 
 but most expensive schoolmaster. In all cases I 
 would rather trust to the reason of a human tutor. 
 
238 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Fate, for whose wisdom I entertain all imaginable 
 reverence, often finds in Chance, by which it works, 
 an instrument not over - manageable. At least the 
 latter very seldom seems to execute precisely and 
 correctly what the former had determined." 
 
 "You seem to express a very singular opinion," 
 said Wilhelm. 
 
 " Not at all ! " replied the other. " Most part of 
 what happens in the world confirms my opinion. 
 Do not many incidents at their commencement show 
 some mighty meaning, and generally terminate in 
 something paltry ? " 
 
 " You mean to jest." 
 
 " And as to what concerns the individual man," 
 pursued the other, "is it not so with him likewise? 
 Suppose Fate had appointed one to be a good player; 
 and why should it not provide us with good players 
 as well as other good things ? Chance might con- 
 duct the youth into some puppet-show perhaps, 
 where, at such an early age, he could not help taking 
 interest in what was tasteless and despicable, reckon- 
 ing insipidities endurable or even pleasing, and thus 
 corrupting and misdirecting his primary impressions 
 — impressions which can never be effaced, and whose 
 influence, in spite of all our efforts, cling to us in 
 some degree to the very last." 
 
 " What makes you think of puppet-shows ? " said 
 Wilhelm, not without some consternation. 
 
 " It was an accidental instance ; if it does not 
 
EDUCATION AND CULTURE. 239 
 
 please you, we shall take another. Suppose Fate had 
 appointed any one to be a great painter, and it 
 pleased Chance that he should pass his youth in 
 sooty huts, in barns and stables; do you think that 
 such a man would ever be enabled to exalt himself 
 to purity, to nobleness, to freedom of soul ? The 
 more keenly he may in his youth have seized on the 
 impure, and tried in his own manner to ennoble it, the 
 more powerfully in the remainder of his life will it 
 be revenged on him ; because, while he was endeav- 
 ouring to conquer it, his whole being has become 
 inseparably combined with it. Whoever spends his 
 early years in mean and pitiful society, though at an 
 after period he may have the choice of better, will yet 
 constantly look back with longing towards that which 
 he enjoyed of old, and which has left its impression 
 blended with the memory of all his young and unre- 
 turning pleasures." 
 
 Education — Universities. 
 
 They teach in universities far too many things, and 
 far too much that is useless. Then the individual 
 professors extend their department too much, far 
 beyond the wants of their hearers. In former days 
 lectures were read in chemistry and botany as be- 
 longing to medicine, and the physician could manage 
 them. Now, both these have become so extensive, 
 that each of them requires a lifetime ; yet acquaint- 
 
240 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 ance with both is expected from the physician. No- 
 thing can come of this : one thing must be neglected 
 and forgotten for the sake of the other. He who is 
 1 wise puts aside all claims which may dissipate his 
 attention, and confining himself to one branch, excels 
 in that. 
 
 Completeness of Culture. 
 
 " It is all men that make up mankind ; all powers 
 taken together that make up the world. These are 
 frequently at variance : and as they endeavour to 
 destroy each other, Nature holds them together by 
 various devices, and again produces them in their 
 diversity. From the first animal tendency to handi- 
 craft attempts, up to the highest practising of intel- 
 lectual art ; from the inarticulate tones and crow- 
 ings of the happy infant, up to the polished utter- 
 ance of the orator and singer ; from the first 
 bickerings of boys up to the vast equipments by 
 which countries are conquered and retained ; from 
 the slightest kindliness and the most transitory love, 
 up to the fiercest passion and the most earnest cove- 
 nant ; from the merest perception of sensible presence, 
 up to the faintest presentiments and hopes of the 
 remotest spiritual future ; — all this, and much more 
 also, lies in man, and must be cultivated : yet not in 
 one, but in many. Every gift is valuable, and ought 
 to be unfolded. If one encourages the beautiful 
 alone, and another encourages the useful alone, it 
 
EDUCATION AND CULTURE. 241 
 
 takes them both to form a man. The useful encour- 
 ages itself; for the multitude produce it, and no one 
 can dispense with it: the beautiful must be encour- 
 aged ; for few can set it forth, and many need it." 
 
 " One power rules another ; but no power can culti- 
 vate another : in each endowment, and not elsewhere, 
 lies the force which must complete it : this many people 
 do not understand, who yet attempt to teach and in- 
 fluence. . . . Let us merely keep a clear and steady 
 eye on what is in ourselves ; on what endowments of 
 our own we mean to cultivate: let us be just to 
 others ; for we ourselves are only to be valued, in so 
 far as we know to value our brother." 
 
 Conventional Morality. 
 
 Oh needless strictness of morality ! while Nature 
 in her own kindly manner trains us to all that we 
 require to be. Oh strange demands of civil society, 
 which first perplexes and misleads us, then asks of us 
 more than Nature herself ! Woe to every sort of 
 culture which destroys the most effectual means of 
 all true culture, and directs us to the end, instead 
 of rendering us happy on the way ! 
 
 Culture. 
 
 The rude man is contented, if he see but something 
 going on ; the man of more refinement must be made 
 to feel ; the man of true culture desires to reflect. 
 Q 
 
242 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 Balance of Culture. 
 
 It is with the cultivation of an artistic as with the 
 cultivation of every other talent. Our strong points 
 to a certain extent develop themselves; but those 
 capacities of our nature which are not in daily exer- 
 cise, and are therefore less vigorous, need particular 
 care, in order that they likewise may become strong, 
 and contribute their share to the general balance of 
 the organism. 
 
 So may a young singer possess certain natural 
 tones which are very excellent, and which leave 
 nothing to desire ; while other tones in his voice may 
 be found less strong, clear, and full. But these are 
 the very tones which he by constant exercise must 
 seek to bring to equal perfection with the others. 
 
 The Commonplace. 
 
 Men are so inclined to content themselves with 
 what is common — the spirit and the senses so easily 
 grow dead to the impressions of the beautiful and 
 perfect — that every one should study to nourish in 
 his mind the faculty of feeling the best things by 
 every method in his power. For no man can bear 
 to be entirely deprived of such enjoyments; it is only 
 because they are not used to taste of what is excellent, 
 that so many people take delight in silly and insipid 
 things, provided they be new. For this reason one 
 
EDUCATION AND CULTURE. 243 
 
 ought every day at least to hear a pleasant song, read 
 a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it be possible, 
 speak a few reasonable words. 
 
 Culture. 
 
 Every cultivated person knows how keenly he has 
 to contend against a certain rudeness both in others 
 and in himself; how much his culture costs him ; how 
 apt he is after all, in certain cases, to think of him- 
 self alone, forgetting what he owes to others. How 
 often has a worthy person to reproach himself with 
 having failed to act with proper delicacy ! And when 
 a fine nature too delicately, too conscientiously, cul- 
 tivates, nay, if you will, over-cultivates itself, there 
 seems to be no toleration, no indulgence for it in the 
 world. Yet such persons are, without us, what the 
 ideal of perfection is within us ; models not for being 
 imitated, but for being aimed at. 
 
 Examinations. 
 
 I cannot approve of the requisition in the studies 
 of future statesmen, of so much theoretically learned 
 knowledge, by which young people are often ruined 
 before their time, both in mind and body. When 
 they enter into practical life, they possess indeed an 
 immense stock of philosophical and learned material; 
 but in the narrow circle of their calling this cannot 
 be practically applied, and will therefore be forgotten 
 
244 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 as useless. On the other hand, what they most 
 needed they have lost; they are deficient in the 
 necessary mental and bodily energy which is quite 
 indispensable when one would enter with efficiency 
 into practical life. 
 
 And then, are not love and benevolence also needed 
 in the life of a statesman — in the management of 
 men ? And how can any one feel and exercise 
 benevolence towards another, when he is ill at ease 
 in his own skin ? 
 
 The Art of Teaching. 
 
 To guard from error is not the instructor's duty, 
 but to lead the erring pupil; nay, to let him quaff 
 his error in deep satiating draughts is sometimes 
 his best wisdom. He who only tastes his error will 
 long dwell with it, will take delight in it as in a sin- 
 gular felicity; while he who drains it to the dregs 
 will, if he be not crazy, find it to be what it is. 
 
 Education — Discipline — Rtile. 
 
 To my mind, he who does not help us at the need- 
 ful moment, never helps ; he who does not counsel at 
 the needful moment, never counsels. I also reckon 
 it essential that we lay down and continually impress 
 on children certain laws, to operate as a kind of hold 
 in life. Nay, I could almost venture to assert that it 
 is better to be wrong by rule, than to be wrong with 
 
EDUCATION AND CULTURE. 245 
 
 nothing but the fitful caprices of our own disposition 
 to impel us hither and thither; and in my way of view- 
 ing men, there always seems to be a void in their 
 nature, which cannot be filled up, except by some 
 decisive and distinctly defined law. 
 
 Education and Natural Genius. 
 
 With man the first and last consideration is 
 activity; and we cannot act on anything without 
 the proper gifts for it, without the instinct which 
 impels us to it. You admit that poets must be 
 born such ; you admit this with regard to all pro- 
 fessors of the fine arts, because you must admit it, 
 because those workings of human nature can scarce 
 be aped with any plausibility. But, if we consider 
 strictly, we shall find that every capability, however 
 slight, is born with us; that there is no vague general 
 capability in men. It is our ambiguous dissipating 
 education that makes men uncertain : it awakens 
 wishes when it should be animating tendencies ; 
 instead of forwarding our real capacities, it turns 
 our efforts towards objects which are frequently dis- 
 cordant with the mind that aims at them. I augur 
 better of a child, or a youth who is wandering astray 
 along a path of his own, than of many who are walk- 
 ing rightly upon paths which are not theirs. If the 
 former class, either by themselves or by the guidance 
 of others, ever find the right path, that is to say, the 
 
246 THE WISDOM OF GOETHE. 
 
 path which suits their nature, they will never leave 
 it ; while the latter are in danger every moment of 
 shaking off a foreign yoke, and abandoning them- 
 selves to unrestricted licence. 
 
 Education. 
 
 To educate their children, women should 
 Do as the ducks do with their plashing brood : 
 Swim up and down with every son and daughter — 
 Only, of course, to swim there must be water. 
 
 Self- Education. 
 
 How from the seed the plant may aptly grow. 
 The gardener is the proper man to know ; 
 But how a youth shall grow into a man. 
 Each trains himself what best or worst he can. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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