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 FOSSLER 
 
 GOETHE'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 8
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 / H I 
 
 « ^w>i 
 
 GOETHE'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Fifth Annual Address Before the Alumni Association of the 
 University of Nebraska, February 16, 1895 
 
 By LAURENCE FOSSLER, M.A. 
 
 LINCOLN 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE ASSOCIATION 
 1896
 
 GOETHE'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Fifth Annual Address Before the Alumni Association of the 
 University of Nebraska, February 16, 1895 
 
 I 
 
 • \ 
 By LAURENCE FOSSLER, M.A. 
 
 I INCOLN 
 Publi in D 1 1 rHE Association 
 1896
 
 I 
 
 JACOB NORTH & CO., PRINTERS 
 LINCOLN 
 
 <?
 
 
 GOETHE'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 [WELTANSCHAUUNG] 
 
 Ladies axd Gentlemen: 
 
 Perhaps I could not direct your attention to a more 
 interesting, and, in a certain sense, a more important 
 theme than the one in hand; for our age is in many re- 
 spects a realization of Goethe's prophetic vision. The 
 twentieth century will enter upon its course with an host 
 trained by and imbued with a spirit which largely owes 
 its origin, or, at least, its chief promulgation, to the poet- 
 philosopher. I do not say that Goethe was the sine '[ltd 
 non of the intellectual light of our time, or that science 
 would not have made giant strides without him, or that 
 the chaotic "Storm and Stress" diction of his contem- 
 poraries in literature would have persisted, or that the 
 dignity and worth of man would not be recognized more 
 now than in his generation, but I do say that in all these 
 movements for the better Goethe has been a banner- 
 bearer, his voice a bugle call rallying men to renewed 
 efforts; that he has, in fact, been a leader and inspirer of 
 men. 
 
 Sixty years ago that voice was hushed, but those sixty 
 years have been years of progress and growth in well- 
 nigh all directions. But, strange to say, we, for the first 
 time, seem to have grasped its full meaning and import 
 and spirit, as if former generations had not and could 
 not have felt and understood it; as if the voice hud boen 
 intended for the ear of the twentieth rather than that 
 of the eighteenth century. 
 
 1 7343!
 
 4 Goethe's Philosophy. 
 
 It would lead us too far were we to trace the sources 
 and factors that ministered to Goethe's intellectual life 
 and growth, a life and a growth exuberant with healthy 
 joy and appreciation, whether in art, or science, or liter- 
 ature, or philosophy. The human soul, no matter how 
 strong and vigorous it be in and of itself, is directed and 
 fashioned by external influences no less than by its in- 
 nate forces. So, in this instance, Goethe, speaking with 
 profound gratitude, frequently pays tribute to Shake- 
 .speare, to Homer, to Spinoza. These choice spirits were 
 his guiding stars; they taught him the way to nature and 
 freedom, to high art and high thinking. 
 
 And yet, of course, these names are only the choicest 
 representatives of the influences which moulded Goethe. 
 His hereditary tendencies, his training at home and at 
 school, his religious environment, the tradition of the 
 past, his own day and generation acted and reacted 
 upon him and helped to make him what he was. From 
 these latter influences no one can escape. They are be- 
 yond human control and management. Involuntarily 
 each individual reflects his age; and all that can be 
 claimed for any man, whether Caesar, or Dante, or 
 Goethe, is, that he has constructed a type within himself 
 of that which necessarily surrounded him; that he shaped 
 and fashioned the given material in conformity with his 
 individuality. 
 
 Though Goethe is the prince of German poets, we 
 shall look upon him on this occasion as the philosopher, 
 the teacher. In Werther, in Wilhelm Meister, in Faust he 
 deals with human life in a broad and comprehensive way. 
 His aim, in these works, is to examine into the generic, 
 the typical, the generalized, the representative. He es- 
 chews the special or accidental. He wishes to present a 
 large view of life; he dignifies man's nature, even while
 
 Goethe's Philosophy. 
 
 laying bare its defects and short-coinings. He desires 
 to see and to tell just what he sees. He is not a preacher, 
 not an exhorter. But he says: This is what I see; look 
 at it, examine it, meditate on it, test it, accept it if you 
 will, reject it if you will, but this is the impression that 
 this universe of ours makes upon me. There is borne in 
 upon Goethe through every sense, through every avenue 
 of access to his inner self, a message from this universe, 
 which he must interpret and give forth, a message from 
 nature to man, from man to man, and from man to himself, 
 a message which to-day has been taken up and reiterated 
 by naturalist, by poet, by philosopher. 
 
 As already intimated, his speculations and his labors 
 extended not only in the direction of the realms of motives 
 and conduct, of literature and art, but into nature, into 
 science, into botany, biology, osteology, archaeology, into 
 finance and administration. There was scarcely a field of 
 inquiry or activity that did not attract him. " Amid 
 littleness and detail he detected the Genius of life, the 
 old cunning Proteus, nestling close beside us." Hence 
 his largeness of vision, hence his marvellous resources, 
 hence, in fact, his philosophy. 
 
 Let us, then, ask ourselves: How did Goethe attempt 
 to solve the mysteries of Nature and God ? how the Prob- 
 lem of Evil in the universe? how did he estimate the 
 Worth and Work of Life? 
 
 In the first part of Faust, in the scene " Forest and 
 Cavern" we find the struggling Faust, having fled into 
 the wilds to escape from the demons that were planted in 
 his flesh. He had sought to flee from himself and to 
 commune with nature and throw himself at her bosom. 
 In the exaltation and extasy of his vision, the vision for 
 which he had longed and striven and which was granted 
 him in this holy, retired calm, he bursts out:
 
 6 Goethe's Philosophy. 
 
 "Spirit Sublime, thou gav'st me, gav'st me all 
 For which I prayed. Not unto me in vain 
 Hast thou thy countenance revealed in fire. 
 Thou gav'st me Nature as a kjngdom grand 
 With power to feel and to enjoy it. Thou 
 Not only cold, amazed acquaintance yield'st, 
 But grantest that in her profouudest breast 
 I gaze, as in the bosom of a friend. 
 The ranks of living creatures thou dost lead 
 Before me, teaching me to know my brothers 
 In air and water and the silent icood." J 
 
 This poetic outburst is really au enunciation of Goethe's 
 scientific creed. An examination into his conception of 
 Nature and her workings reveal him to be the great 
 champion of her unity, of identity in variation. The dis- 
 covery of any fact or facts, the explanation of any phe- 
 nomena meant, as he says himself, " the synthesis of 
 world and mind, giving the most blessed assurance of the 
 eternal harmony of things." As early as 1786 he had 
 discovered and announced the existence of the inter-max- 
 illary bone (the bone bearing the upper incisor teeth), a 
 bone which the anatomists and osteologists of his day had 
 not found nor recognized, and the absence or lack of which 
 seemed to attest an essential difference in the anatomical 
 structure of man and the lower animals. But Goethe's 
 intuitive craving for unity would not admit breaks or 
 cataclysms in nature's domain. Accordingly this discov- 
 ery but strengthened him in his position and led him to 
 formulate his views to the effect that all differences in the 
 anatomical structure of vertebrates were to be considered 
 as variations of corresponding parts ; i. e., the wing of bird, 
 the fin of fish, the arm of man, and foot of horse were 
 really one and the same organ, changed through function 
 and environment. This theory was first announced in 
 
 1 Taylor's translation.
 
 Goethe's Philosophy. 7 
 
 1795. ' We can scarcely appreciate the full significance 
 and importance of these statements, till we remember that 
 his contemporary, Herder, in the Ideen zur Philosophie 
 der GeschicMe tier Menschheit, rather held that man had 
 descended from animal and animals from plants. 
 
 But the vantage ground thus gained only opened 
 larger vistas. If it were demonstrably true that the an- 
 atomical structure of vertebrates was founded on the 
 principles of homology, Goethe felt justified in advanc- 
 ing another step, and in holding that there existed a 
 "similar analogy between the various parts of one aud 
 the same organic being." Careful observation of the 
 transformation of insects from the larva into its final 
 stage suggested that the originally similar rings — the 
 first and the last only showing any deviation — gradually 
 transform themselves and develop appendages: those 
 forming the thorax, legs; those of the head, mandibles 
 and antennae; and that, consequently, the abdominal 
 rings conformed to the original undifferentiated type. 
 Especially did the vegetable world engage Goethe's scien- 
 tific interest. He, there, perceived clearly the transition 
 from fundamentally similar into functionally dissimilar 
 organs. 
 
 He divined that leaf and flower and fruit were in re- 
 ality the same organ, changed to suit circumstances and 
 conditions, or, rather, changed by circumstances and con- 
 ditions. Once possessed of these facts, he was led to 
 recognize the skull to be composed of transformed verte- 
 brae. He says: "The three posterior bones (of the 
 head) I recognized easily enough, but only in the year 
 1700, when I picked up a fractured sheep skull in the 
 
 l Er$ter Entwurf ciner allgemeinen Einleitung in die vergleieh 
 ende Anatomie, etc.
 
 8 Goethe's Philosophy. 
 
 Jewish cemetery at Venice, it flashed upon me that the 
 facial bones, too, were transformed vertebrae. Then I 
 saw the transition from the sphenoid into the ethmoid 
 and the turbinated bones." 
 
 You perceive that his outlook into the harmony and 
 essential unity of organic creation became more and 
 more penetrating. Let us guard ourselves lest we regard 
 these truisms of the end of the nineteenth century as be- 
 ing too self evident or of slight moment. These discov- 
 eries betokened a new spirit, a new point of view, a new 
 conception of nature. They betokened the entering into 
 the splendid domain of modern science, in which man is 
 to make lasting conquests, in which he will constrain her 
 to minister to his highest intellectual faculties, as well as 
 to be his hand-maid and household drudge. These views 
 of Goethe are so fundamental that they may well be re- 
 garded as the working theory of the nineteenth century 
 scientists. His views on evolution and. development are 
 manifestly closely akin to those so brilliantly worked out 
 by Darwin. Darwin's work, the Origin of Species, was 
 given to the world in 1859, some thirty years after 
 Goethe's death. Only laboriously collected data could 
 prove the correctness of so widespreading and widesweep- 
 ing a generalization which Goethe had formulated only in- 
 tuitively, I admit, and it is Darwin's chief title to our es- 
 teem, as Prof. Helmholtz remarks, "to have pointed out 
 the relation of causes, the effects of which are, or at least 
 might be, the bringing about of such correspondences 
 and homologous organs in the most widely separated 
 organisms." 
 
 In the light of what has been said so far we shall have 
 no great difficulty in appreciating Goethe's conception of 
 Nature as reflected in the following extracts from his 
 aphorisms on Nature:
 
 Goethe's Philosophy. 9 
 
 "Nature! We are surrounded by her and locked in her clasp; 
 powerless to leave her and powerless to come closer to her." 
 
 "She creates new forms without end; what exists now, never 
 was before; what was, comes not again; all is new and yet always 
 old." 
 
 "Nature is the sole artist; out of the simplest materials (she 
 produces) the greatest diversity, attaining, with no trace of ef- 
 fort, the finest perfection, the closest precision, always softly 
 veiled. Each of her works has an essence of its own; every shape 
 that she takes is in idea utterly isolated; and yet all forms one." 
 
 " There is constant life in her motion and development; and 
 yet she remains where she was. She is eternally changing, nor 
 for a moment does she stand still. Of rest she knows nothiug, 
 and to all stagnation she has affixed her curse. She is steadfast; 
 her steps are measured, her exceptions rare, her laws immutable.'" 
 
 "Her springs of action are few, but they never wear out. They 
 are always working, always manifold." 
 
 "She puts gulfs between all things, and all things strive to be 
 interfused. She isolates everything, that she may draw every- 
 thing together." 
 
 "Every moment she starts on the longest journeys, and every 
 moment reaches her goal." 
 
 " She is whole and yet never finished. As she works now, so can 
 she work forever." 
 
 " Life is her fairest invention, and Death is her device for hav- 
 ing life in abundance." 
 
 "She hides herself in a thousand names and terms, and is al- 
 ways the same." 
 
 "She envelops man in darkness, and urges him constantly to 
 the light. She makes him depend on the earth, heavy and 
 sluggish, and always rouses him up afresh." ' 
 
 To Goethe Nature was the living garment of the Deity, 
 "der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid" woven "in Lebens- 
 fluten, im Thatensturm" (in the tides of life, in action's 
 storm). Nature ever varying, yet ever the same, ever 
 new, yet ever old; Nature in her completeness, her adap- 
 tation to the wants of her children, her passivity, her un- 
 conquerable energies, her vastness, her inapproachable- 
 ness, her willingness to disclose her secrets when rightly 
 
 •Maxims and Reflections of Goethe, translated by T. Bailey 
 Saunders.
 
 10 Goethe's Philosophy. 
 
 interrogated, Goethe regarded as the visible manifestation 
 of God. In the Gesprdche mit Goethe Eckermann tells 
 how, one day, some one presented him with some young 
 nestlings. The parent bird, too, had been caught; but, 
 though liberty was given to her, she did not avail her- 
 self of it, preferring to brave danger and captivity to 
 leaving her offspring. Upon expressing his astonishment 
 at such parental solicitude, Goethe chided him: "Fool- 
 ish man," said he, "if you believe in God, you would not 
 marvel. If God did not animate the bird with this all- 
 powerful impulse for her young, and if this same prin- 
 ciple did not extend throughout all nature, the world 
 could not stand! But now this Divine energy is every- 
 where, this Love Eternal is evervwhere active." ■ Goethe 
 is pantheistic. He finds nature to possess neither speech 
 nor language, yet creating "hearts and tongues through 
 which she feels and speaks." He finds Thought, Kind- 
 ness, Love there. The universe to him, as to Spinoza, 
 when viewed in the light of extension, is matter, when 
 viewed as thought or intelligence, is the causa sui, is God. 
 The universe is not God, yet God and the universe are one. 
 Dr. Hedge defines pantheism as being "God, the creative 
 and ruling power of the universe, distinguished by rea- 
 son alone from the universe itself." Goethe's specula- 
 tive and religious notions accord entirely with this defi- 
 nition. He is a disciple of Spinoza, a thorough-going^ 
 defender of the inseparableness of Nature and God. He 
 asks: 
 
 ^ol. II., p. 234. For other passages, dealing with this same 
 subject, see Gespraeche^ 'ol II., pp. 190-192, 199-200. Vol. III., pp. 
 22, 30, 150, 257-258, et al.
 
 Goethe s Philosophy. 11 
 
 "What God were he who only from without 
 Impelled, controlled the circles of his worlds? 
 Nay, rather does he move them from within; 
 Brooding o'er Nature, Nature housing him. 
 He evermore his Spirit-power proves 
 In that which in him is and lives and moves.' 7 > 
 
 Goethe was the last remove from atheism, but he pro- 
 tested against anthropomorphism in all its forms. The 
 tendency to development, the correlation of forces in all 
 the countless metamorphoses of tangible, material things, 
 spoke to him of an inscrutable power transcending all hu- 
 man conception and refusing to be comprised in any 
 scholastic definition, or creed of church. "Credo Drain. " 
 be says, "that is a fine, a worthy thing to say; but to re- 
 cognize God wherever and whenever he reveals himself is 
 the only true joy on earth." Again he says: " The finest 
 achievement for a man of thought is to have fathomed what 
 may be fathomed and quietly revere the unfathomable." 
 
 I scarcely need to point out the correspondence be- 
 tween these views of Goethe and the philosophy based on 
 the ultimate results of modern science. The conception 
 of an extraneous anthropomorphic, spasmodically acting 
 agent or master-mechanic sitting outside his universe, 
 ruling and directing it arbitrarily and without certain 
 sequence, has been relegated to the limbo of past crudi- 
 ties. Creative power cannot be conceived of in so inade- 
 quate and puerile a way. Nor, on the other hand, can it 
 be conceived of as hurling its worlds into space, leaving 
 them to blind, drtary, lawless chance. The latter view i- 
 
 1 Was war' ein Gott, der nur von aussen stiesse, 
 Im Krois das All am Finger laufen liesse, 
 Ihm ziemt's die Welt im Innern zu hewegen, 
 Natur in Sich, Sich in Natur zu ho„'on, 
 So dass, was in Ihm lebt and webt and 1st, 
 Nie Seine Kraft, nio Seiueu Geist vermisst 
 
 — Gott und Welt.
 
 12 Goethe's Philosophy. 
 
 as irrational as the former. In the light of modern 
 science, the special or chance agency theory is simply im- 
 possible, neither can we pretend that the natural law 
 theory can give answer to ultimate questions. Some 
 wider and more fundamental generalization can alone re- 
 concile the existence of laws, eternal, unvarying, inexor- 
 able, and "a true objective reasonableness" (the phrase 
 is John Fiske's) in the universe. He says: "There is a 
 true objective reasonableness in the universe; its events 
 have an orderly progression." l And again: "The pro- 
 cess of evolution is itself the working out of a mighty 
 Teleology." 2 
 
 What, now, is the only way to reconcile these seemingly 
 opposite and mutually exclusive views of special or "direct" 
 agency and "natural law?" Modern science, or rather 
 modern philosophy based on that science, re-asserts and 
 amplifies and develops the views of an Origan, a Clement, 
 an Athanasius and other profound thinkers from their 
 time to the present, and holds to a God imminent, indwell- 
 ing, and inseparably in Nature. In the words of Profes- 
 sor Le Conte: " We are compelled to acknowledge an infi- 
 nite, imminent Deity behind phenomena, but manifested 
 to us on the outside as an all-pervasive energy." 3 And 
 John Fiske: " In the swaying to and fro of molecules and 
 the ceaseless pulsations of ether, in the secular shifting 
 of planetary orbits, in the busy work of frost and rain- 
 drop, in the mysterious sprouting of the seed, in the ever- 
 lasting pale of death and life renewed, in the dawning of 
 the babe's intelligence, in the varied deeds of men from 
 age to age, (the thinker) finds that which awakens the 
 soul to reverential awe ; and each act of scientific explana- 
 
 1 Idea of God, p. xi. 
 
 2 Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. 2, p. 406. 
 
 3 Evolution and Its Relation to Religious Thought.
 
 Gocihe's Phrtosojjhy. 13 
 
 tion but reveals au opening through which shines the 
 glory of the Eternal Majesty." ' 
 
 Le Conte compares this relation of an imminent Deity 
 and Nature to the relation between mind and brain. 
 
 It is conceivable, he says in substance, that an ob- 
 server, an outside observer, could detect and distinguish 
 molecular and chemical changes accompany in o- r condi- 
 tioning psychic activity ; but it is inconceivable how such 
 an observer could detect the psychic activity itself. That 
 could, of course, only be known through consciousness, 
 i. e., the psychic state could only be known by the inner 
 personality. Now science simply clambers round on the 
 outside; it is bound to observe and formulate its observa- 
 tions into wider and wider generalizations, but they can 
 only be made fromt he outside, and consequently, they can- 
 not militate against a conscious personality within. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that Goethe was a fit precursor of 
 nineteenth century philosophy. That philosophy affirms 
 and confirms the existence of a Power — unknown and un- 
 knowable it is termed by some — a Power which underlies 
 all phenomena as their very source and center and cir- 
 cumference, a Power or a God in whom, to use St. Paul's 
 phrase, " We live and move and have our being." 
 
 But now let us examine another, and, if possible, a still 
 more profound conception of Goethe's — his ideas of Evil 
 in the universe. We shall find Mephistopheles the sign 
 and symbol, the very embodiment of "Evil." Whatever 
 traits Goethe bestowed upon that most celebrated creation 
 that do not agree with this view, must be regarded as in- 
 cidental ornamentation required by poetic necessities. In 
 the Faust story, in that story of man's limitation, bewil- 
 derment and error, in that story of a soul's discontent aud 
 
 spair because of the seeming narrowness and petti- 
 
 1 Idea of God, p. 110.
 
 14 Goethe's Philosophy. 
 
 ness of life and its opportunities, in that story in which is 
 heard the clanking of the chains of bondage as they are 
 shaken into the very face of the Almighty, Mephistopheles 
 appears and offers to be a savior, a companion, and a guide 
 through the world and to the heart's desires. As in the 
 days of Job, the Adversary had asked and obtained per- 
 mission to " try the servant," who, according to his view, 
 served the Lord " after strange devices." He proposed to 
 i;. ke Faust "eat dust and with a zest, as did a certain 
 snake, his near relation." He had come to Faust by suf- 
 ferance of the Lord, who had declared: 
 
 " Man's active nature, flagging, seeks too soon the level; 
 Unqualified repose he learns to crave. 
 Whence, willingly, the comrade him I gave. 
 Wno works, excites, and must create as Devil. 
 
 Goethe makes Mephistopheles appear in numberless 
 disguises; he is a perfect Proteus in form. There is 
 stamped on him, however, an essential unity, an identity 
 of aim and purpose. As above stated, he is the embodi- 
 ment of the opposition to all order. Nay, more — he is 
 "Evil " in the universe, he is negation, opposition, disin- 
 tegration, destruction, Death — both in the psychic and 
 the physical realm; in the world of matter and of mind. 
 
 In answer to Faust's importunities, the exorcised Me- 
 phistopheles defines himself thus: 
 
 "I am the Spirit that Denies!" 
 
 and then he justifies himself at once by adding, 
 
 "And justly so: for all things, from the Void 
 Called forth, deserve to be destroyed: 
 'T were better, then, were naught created." 
 
 Again . 
 
 "All which you as Sin have rated— 
 Destruction,— aught with evil blent,- 
 That is my proper element."
 
 Goethe's Philosophy. 15 
 
 Yet this activity, this personification of denial, opposi- 
 tion, and destruction of that which the fiat of creative 
 energy has brought forth presents nothing startli] 
 The Hebrew Satan, the Persian Ahriman, the Hindoo 
 Vritra, the Norse Lold stand for the same concept] 
 Ail nations have personified the powers of good and the 
 powers of evil, and men have regarded the universe as being 
 divided between these two. So I say, that there is nothi 
 startling in this conception of Goethe's in having Me- 
 phistopheles stand as the embodiment of evil. It is 
 rather these lines that startle us: — 
 
 "Part of the Part (i. e., merely one aspect, one form) am I, ouce 
 All, in primal Night — 
 Part of the Darkness which brought forth the Light." 
 
 and the lines, 
 
 "Part of the Power (I am) not understood, 
 \ Vnich always wills the Bad aud always ivories the Good." 
 
 It is rather these lines that contain the challenging prop- 
 osition. Goethe, then, conceives of the Power, generally 
 denominated evil, rated as evil, as a part of a whole, as a 
 part of the power and energy, and essentially one with : 
 power and energy in the universe ; as a remnant, so to speak, 
 a representative of a former condition; or, if that is too 
 anthropomorphic a conception, as one aspect of the stu- 
 pendous, all-pervading World-Power. For to him 11. 
 exists only " Das Ewig Eine, das sich vielfacJi offenbart " 
 — the Eternally One, manifesting itself in most diverse 
 ways. Goethe caunct conceive of nature, the whole 
 boundless domain of the universe, of every object and force, 
 whether physical or psychic, whether matter or spirit, in 
 any other way than that they are all parts or portions of 
 an infinite Unit. Hence, Mephistopheles, though the 
 embodiment of evil, though Evil itself, accomplishes th<' 
 Good. And how? By destroying the partial and tin-
 
 16 Goethe's Philosophy. 
 
 incomplete. The evil consists in the fact that a transition 
 from a lower to a higher form of life or existence, or, as 
 we ordinarily say, an evolutionary process, is impossible 
 without the destruction of any given state of being. 
 Growth of organized bodies proceeds simultaneously with 
 their destruction. Or, at any rate, the "neutral zone" is 
 exceedingly narrow. The wave of life is evermore fol- 
 lowed by the wave of death. There is an eternal forma- 
 tion and transformation, and eternal dissolution and re- 
 combining into new forms. The Divine creative Energy 
 must be accompanied by the Divine destructive Energy. 
 "Every moment," he says of nature, "every moment she 
 starts on the longest journeys, and every moment reaches 
 her goal." Existence means transition; Life means Death. 
 Hear Mephistopheles: 
 
 "The Something of this clumsy World— has yet. 
 With all that I have undertaken, 
 Not been by me disturbed or shaken: 
 From earthquake, tempest, wave, volcano's brand, 
 Back into quiet settle sea and land. 
 And that damned stuff, the bestial human brood — 
 What use in having that to play with? 
 How many have I done away with! 
 And ever circulates a newer, fresher blood. 
 
 # ^c :{: # ^ % & 
 
 From water, earth, and air unfolding, 
 
 A thousand germs break forth and grow." 
 
 Confessedly his opposition, his uprooting, his destroy- 
 ing are unavailing in the direction aimed at by him. 
 Rather does his work avail in making more abundant life 
 possible, in bringing about the fullness of life, through 
 progress and growth. He, therefore, wills the Bad, but 
 does the Good; therefore, he is a part of the Creative En- 
 ergy, a part of the necessary order of the world. 
 
 We all are ready to acknowledge the necessity of such 
 an eternal conflict in the physical universe, but Goethe
 
 Goethe's Philosophy. IT 
 
 entertained a like conviction touching the realm of mind 
 and morals. Precisely as lie held that all forms of life 
 now extant, are the resultants of contending agencies, 
 agencies for and against, active throughout the whole 
 process of creation, so he regarded our moral and spirit- 
 ual ideals and advancement as the resultant of tendencies 
 no less diverse or opposite, each contending for the 
 mastery. To Goethe the very conception of morality in- 
 volved struggle, failure, triumph. In other words, moral- 
 ity involves the existence of the Mephistopheiian element 
 within us, as an indispensable part of our natures. This 
 Mephistopheiian element, conceived of as a part of our- 
 selves, is the necessary condition upon which all possi- 
 bility of spiritual excellence depends. 
 
 It is just here where the average moralist hesitates to 
 follow. Goethe's quasi-pantheistic or theistic-pantheistic 
 views are sometimes adjudged to be unmoral if not im- 
 moral. He is made to hold that God is the author of 
 evil and sin. If there is but one force in the universe, in 
 which there is so much evil and sin, and if God is that 
 force, how, then, can we escape the conclusion that God 
 is the author of evil? We cannot, except as we realize 
 that evil, sin, imperfection are mere abstract terms (I beg 
 you to understand me), expressing a comparison between 
 various states of existence, each perfect in and of itself; 
 ?'. e., when dissociated from every other mode of existence. 
 As Professor Falkenberg, in his summary of the philoso- 
 phy of Spinoza, has pointed out, that thinker held that 
 "In reality everything is that which it can be, hence 
 without defect; everything is, in itself considered, per- 
 fect; even the fool and the sinner cannot bo otherwise 
 than they are; they appear imperfect only when placed 
 beside the wise and the virtuous. Sin is thus only a 
 lesser reality than virtue, evil a 1 i good; good and
 
 18 Goethe's Philosophy. 
 
 bad, activity and passivity, power and weakness are 
 merely distinctions in degree." 1 
 
 I make this quotation touching Spinoza's philosophy 
 to point out the source of, or, at least, the corroborating 
 authority in Goethe's philosophy. Goethe acknowledged 
 himself the debtor of Spinoza. They held, in common, 
 that " particular cases of defect are justified by the per- 
 fection of the whole;" that the Universe is perfect to an 
 Infinite intelligence, and that only our finite, diminutive 
 mental grasp fails to reach the higher unity. 
 
 Then, to sum up Goethe's position on what human 
 speech designates as death, destruction, and dissolution 
 in the physical universe, as sin and evil in the spiritual, 
 it is evident, that he considered them the necessary con- 
 ditions or stages in a process of evolution and growth. 
 The ideal to which all life is tending he conceived to be 
 hidden from man's eyes. Yet he was conscious of a 
 polarity or tendency upwards. The 
 
 " . . one far-off, divine event 
 To which the whole creation moves," 
 
 was a reality to him. His keenest observation, his 
 strong intuition led him, nay, forced him, to acknowledge 
 and revere "the Power, not ourselves," which in the 
 physical domain of nature builds and destroys, builds 
 and destroys and yet advances ; and, in the moral world, 
 succeeds and fails, succeeds and fails, succeeds and fails, 
 and yet, humanly speaking, " makes for righteousness." 
 
 But now, finally, let us ask: What means or agencies 
 are at the disposal of this Power to lead men to a higher 
 estate? What then, according to Goethe, are the chief 
 factors in the moulding and enlarging and fashioning the 
 
 1 History of Modern Philosophy, p. 140.
 
 Goethe's Philosophy. 10 
 
 inner life of man? How does man fit into the universe? 
 What shall be the standard of his success? In other 
 words: What is the purpose of man's existence, and what 
 means are at his command to attain this purpose? 
 
 Goethe's philosophical views respecting the unity and 
 the perfection of nature and of the moral forces in the 
 universe did not lead him to entertain a laissez fairc 
 creed or practice. 
 
 His constant watchword is " endeavor, activity, toil, ef- 
 fort/' It is no easy thing to shake off the clogs of 
 earth. You remember in Vv T ilhelm Meister's Lehrbrief or 
 Indenture this passage: 
 
 •'Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. 
 To act is easy, to think, hard, to act according to our thL.'.u 
 
 troublesome The excellent is rarely found, more rarely 
 
 valued. The heights charm us; the steps to it do not; with the 
 summit in our view we love to walk along the plain." ' 
 
 How, then, is man to train himself to value the truly ex- 
 cellent and not to shun the weariness of the steps to at- 
 tain the height? Goethe's answer is: through Culture 
 and Experience; i. e., through the assimilation of the 
 best that civilization has produced in art, in science, in 
 literature, and through the direct contact of the ego with 
 its environment. Goethe realized, as few men of his day 
 realized, that he was the heir of Time, of the visible and 
 tangible products of the past, as well as of invisible and 
 intangible bequests. 
 
 "My inheritance," he says, "how glorious and how fair, 
 Time is my seed-field, of Time I am heir." 
 
 He held that, of necessity, each human soul must make 
 the life contemporary and preceding it the medium in 
 which to unfold its powers, till, helped by infinite Love> 
 the "stubborn laurel" is twined about the victor's brow. 
 
 1 Wilhelm M ister, Bk. VII., Chap. IX.
 
 20 Goethe's Philosophy. 
 
 I put the sentence advisedly thus, for, whatever may be 
 said to the contrary, Goethe's nature was essentially reli- 
 gious, bidding him to explore and penetrate whatever he 
 could, bidding him, too, to revere the unknown. This 
 element of reverence, the religious element, betrays itself 
 constantly in all his writings. It betrays itself in his 
 real, or, more frequently, apparent, worldliness, in his 
 nature cult, in all his philosophy. True, he himself 
 recognizes and presses for recognition cultural influences 
 the importance and value of which are not appreciated by a 
 lower order of minds; influences which, Goethe discerns, 
 enter deeply into man's spiritual growth. He discerns 
 in man a restlessness, a dissatisfied longing after what- 
 not; he interprets this as an essential condition to " pass 
 from more to more," "from the blade to the ear, after- 
 wards to the full corn in the ear." A Faust can safely 
 pledge his soul to Satan on the condition that it shall be 
 forfeited only when sense pleasures shall forever content 
 it. That moment never comes. Man's place in nature is 
 not to succumb to earth and earthly things, not to rot 
 with the beasts, but to be up and doing. Despite devia- 
 tions, man has " an instinct of the one true way." In the 
 transcendent mysteries of the spiritual world, Faith and 
 Truth and Love are immense realities to Goethe. His 
 watch-words are learn, do, ACT. 
 
 "When the crowd sways, unbelieving, 
 Show the daring will that warms, 
 He is crowned with all achieving 
 Who perceives, and then performs." : 
 
 Perception and action, learning and doing, are the cries 
 from the mouth of this prophet. Ohne Hast, aber ohne 
 Bast; like the very stars in their orbits, obeying the Al- 
 mighty's commands, man must go, must fit himself red- 
 action and then act. 
 
 1 Faust, Part II, Act I.
 
 Goethe's Philosophy. 21 
 
 I said above that Goethe was the apostle of culture. 
 Yes, but he also wrapt a halo of dignity and worth about 
 the common, the homespun realities. These he exalted: 
 these he idealized. He saw, as he said to Eckermann in 
 referring to TTilhelrn Meister, that, when man submits 
 to the instructions, which trivial, commonplace things 
 can afford, he is " like Saul, the son of Kish, who went 
 out to seek his father's asses and found a kingdom." 
 The dross can be turned into gold; that is precisely the 
 value of the experiences of life. Those virtues which only 
 the highest stations can elicit and foster cannot be re- 
 garded as fundamental to a common humanity. Scherer 
 finds that "In Tasso, self-denial, moderation, and renun- 
 ciation appear as the chief requirements for a wise con- 
 duct of life." This is the ideal set forth not only in 
 Tasso, but in Wilhelm Meister and in Faust. Ultimately 
 the poet would have us pass from self-glorification to self- 
 renunciation. Life is not all the one, is not all the other. 
 The voice of the ancient goddess of wisdom, Pallas, bids 
 men to practice 
 
 "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control." 
 But Goethe, while accepting this injunction, would go 
 further: 
 
 " who seeks not noble works 
 
 Belongs but to the elements." 1 
 
 Man's worth and value to the world are naught, if ho 
 stops with self. The virtues, insisted on by Pallas, lead 
 men "to sovereign power," to act and work in their day 
 and generation. But he who dallies and plays with life is 
 lost. The dreamer, the emotionalist, is lost. Werther, 
 that hyper-sensitive Hamlet, whose every nerve thrilled 
 and throbbed with generous impulses, was lost. 'Tis not 
 enough to feel, not enough to meditate; we must act 
 
 1 Faust, Part II., V.
 
 22 Goethe's Philosophy. 
 
 Goethe crowned the Second Part of Faust with a pre- 
 sentation of benevolent, altruistic activity. He makes 
 Faust realize the truth that 
 
 "Men may rise on stepping stones 
 Of their dead selves to higher things." 
 
 He depicted Faust as being beaten back, driven to seek 
 shelter in this sphere, after having been whipped and 
 scourged by all sorts of phantoms and spectres, after 
 having realized the futihtv of making aught else com- 
 mensurate with the responsibility and the purposes of liv- 
 ing. Pardon my explicitness. The views indicated seem 
 to me to be the ripest conclusions of the octogenarian 
 poet; they are the legacy which the poet-sage, the philos- 
 opher-scientist has left us. Of course you have observed 
 the identity of these results with the Master's " Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." If this be all, you 
 may ask, then why this meandering, why this insistence 
 upon culture and liberty and individuality? Hear Goethe 
 himself: 
 
 "Those do not do well who, in a solitary, and exclusive manner, 
 follow moral cultivation by itself. On the contrary, it will be found 
 that he, whose spirit strives for a development of that kind, has 
 likewise every reason, at the same time, to improve the finer sen- 
 tient powers, that he may not run the risk of sinking from his 
 moral height, by giving way to a lawless fancy and degrading his 
 moral nature, by allowing it to take delight in tasteless baubles, 
 if not in something worse." l 
 
 Again he says: 
 
 "The whole universe lies before us, like a quarry before the 
 master builder, who only deserves this name if he, out of these 
 fortuitous stone-masses, build a structure corresponding to his 
 ideal, and, if he do his work with economy, skill, and purpose. 
 Everything without us is element, material, indeed, I may say 
 everything about us is such, but deep within lies the creative 
 power, capable of shaping all that is to be, giving us neither rest 
 nor quiet, till we have, in somo way, disposed of and given form 
 and shape to the elements around us." l 
 
 1 Wilhelm Meister, Bekenntnisse einer schoenen Seele. 
 
 1
 
 Goeihc's Philosophy. 23 
 
 This being Goethe's view of man and his environments, 
 ■we can understand his insistence on culture, on all that • 
 assures breadth and scope and growth. This explains to 
 us his reversion to Hellenism, to those rare ideals of 
 beauty and form of the ancient world. Modern indus- 
 trialism did not content him, conventional Christianity, 
 with its penchant for self-abasement and dogmatism, did 
 not content him. Along with all that the modern world 
 has. he would enter into the past, make antiquity sub- 
 serve the present, by teaching that present 
 
 "Grace, Majesty and the calm Bliss of life." 
 
 He understood the influence the matchless ideals of the 
 "old pagan world of beauty " had on man's development. 
 True, they were only artistic, intellectual types, not neces- | 
 sarily moral. But morality is not the whole of this world : 
 growth along other lines is equally demanded by man's 
 nature. The fine arts are not necessarily moral pursuits, 
 nevertheless, only man with an infinite capacity for ad- 
 vancement can cultivate them. They are expressions of 
 the higher life within him. The centuries since the Italian 
 Renaissance justify Goethe's position. The asceticism of 
 the middle ages liad to be supplemented, or rather, sup- 
 planted by juster views of man and his place in the uni- 
 verse. Man had been enveloped by the choke-damp of 
 tradition and gloomy dogma, the Renaissance let in light, 
 and beauty and renewed vigor. There was, accordingly. 
 a blending of greater moral earnestness and greater hu- 
 man freedom, a more adequate recognition of mas as a 
 brother and an exaltation of self. Existence was placed 
 in anew perspective. Henceforth neither Epicureans nor 
 flagellants presented ideals to the world. A n«w era, an 
 era of toil and discovery and progress had dawned. 
 
 In the Second Part of Faust the Aged Toiler Lb rep- 
 resented by Goethe as having seen the white wand of the
 
 24 Goethe's Philosophy. 
 
 spectre, Death. For a moment he was terrified. He had 
 not yet earned his liberty, he had not yet freed himself 
 entirely from the thralls. Could he but stand a free, un- 
 trammeled, manly man, up-borne, by nature, resigned as a 
 flower or a bird! But these brain spectres! These phan- 
 tom shapes! Blindness is breathed upon him; his eye- 
 sight darkens; but, lo! The splendor of an inward vision 
 shines ! 
 
 "The night seems deeper now to press around me," 
 he breaks out, 
 
 "Bat in my inmost spirit all is light. 
 I rest not till the finished work has crowned me." 
 
 Active ! Active ! ! Active ! ! ! 
 
 "Yes, to this thought I hold with firm persistence; 
 The last results of wisdom stamps it true: — 
 He only earns his freedom and existence 
 Who daily conquers them anew. 
 
 What is this to conquer freedom and existence daily ? I 
 am persuaded that Goethe meant to urge a constant will- 
 ingness, yea, an avidity to be further to-day than yester- 
 day; to be ever ready to exchange the good of yesterday 
 with the better of to-day. He meant that men should not 
 be cloyed by custom and conventionalities ; to see right as 
 God gives them to see the right and to obey the law of 
 growth unflinchingly. To conquer our freedom is to be 
 manly, alert, wide-awake morally, intellectually, religi- 
 ously, open and eager in the pursuit of truth. Truth is 
 only attained by striving. Does the man asleep in torpor, 
 whether religious, intellectual or moral — does he deserve 
 the sense of freedom ? Is it not a profound fact that only 
 he, who is willing to don the armor, to conquer his free- 
 dom, is free and alive indeed? I can illustrate this dic- 
 tum of Goethe's best by an appeal to history. Why 
 have races and peoples perished ? Is it not because they
 
 Goethe's Philosopluj. 26 
 
 kept not pace with the totality of advance, man was mak- 
 ing? Did these perished races adjust themselves to the 
 sounder knowledge or sounder life principles that others 
 had acquired? Did they keep vigilant watch on the 
 towers of their possessions? The towers were stormed 
 and taken, and the consequence is that Assyria and Baby- 
 lon, Egypt, Greece, and Boine are no more. Was not 
 Goethe right in saying 
 
 "Das ist der Weisheit hochster Schluss: — 
 Nur der verdient sick Freiheit wie das Leben 
 Der taglich sie erobern muss?" 
 
 This, Goethe puts before us, as the lave of life. He 
 urges constant vigilance, constant effort to grow and to 
 receive light, "more light." Every man can advance on 
 this line, — he can conquer inertness and seek to be alive 
 and true. Man is "dowered with Day and Night" 'tis 
 true, with noblest impulses and with ignoble passions, and 
 yet he is called to advance. Goethe would have us think, 
 as did Browning, that 
 
 "All good things 
 Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul." 
 
 Human existence is not a mistake. The Almighty has 
 not made a huge blunder in framing his worlds, has not 
 made a huge blunder in framing our dust; nor has he failed 
 to provide means for attaining the fullness of life.
 
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