V I \ >^^^^, XJNIV OP THE ERSI Si/- /FORNIX rp' GOETHE IN AGE. From the bust by Ranch about 1820. THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE LECTURES AT THE CONCORD SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY EDITED BY F. B. SANBORN BOSTON TICKNOR AND COMPANY 1886 Copyright, 1885, By Ticknor and Company. All rights reserved. CSnibftaita 1P«2b: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. -. I CONTENTS. PORTRAITS. Goethe in Age. From Raucli's Bust . . . Frontispiece. Goethe IN Youth Tofacep.l Page Introduction. — The Goethe Society and the Goethe Archives. — Bibliography of Goethe's Works, of Works on Goethe, and of Papers on Goethe — The Concord School V I. Goethe's Youth. Prof. H. S. White .... 1 II. Goethe's Self-Culture. John Alhee .... 37 III. Goethe's Titanism. Thomas Davidson .... 68 IV. Goethe and Schiller. Rev. G. A. Bartol . . 107 V. Goethe's Marchen. Rev. F. H. Hedge . . . 135 VI. Goethe's Relation to English Literature. F. B. Sanborn 157 VII. Goethe as a Playwright. TFilliam Ordivay Partridge 189 VIII. Das Ewig-Weibliche. Mrs. E. D. Cheney , . 218 IX. The Elective Affinities. S. H. Emery, Jr. . 251 X. Child Life as portrayed by Goethe. Mrs. Caroline K. Sherman 290 IV CONTENTS. XI. History op the Faust Poem. Denton J. Snider 313 XII. Goethk's "Women. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe . . 345 XIII. Goethe's Faust. W. T. Harris 368 INDEX 447 -^. INTEODUCTION. The Lectures on Goethe here printed are not the whole of those delivered at the School of Philosophy in July, 1885 ; for several of the lecturers have either published their essays elsewhere, or withhold them for other uses. Much also tha^t was said in the con- versations which followed the Lectures, and which threw light on the text as here printed, is necessarily omitted ; although the lecturers, in revising their manuscripts, have sometimes included remarks that were thus made. Mr. Alcott, the founder of the School, although several times present during these sessions, (as he had not been since 1882,) was unable to make his comments in the conversations ; and therefore some passages from his Diaries have been inserted in the lecture of Mr. Sanborn. On the other hand, Mr. Snider and other lecturers have omitted, in revision, some of the comments made in the spoken lectures. Professor Hewett, of Cornell University, whose lecture on " Goethe in Weimar," expanded, wiU form part of a series on the " Homes of the German Poets " Vi INTRODUCTION. in Harper's Magazine, and is not available for this volume, has kindly furnished for this Introduction an account of the newly discovered Goethe manuscripts which were mentioned in his lecture. It is based on the reports of Professor Geiger and Dr. Brahm, and is as follows. THE GOETHE SOCIETY AND THE GOETHE ARCHIVES. Walther von Goethe, Chamberlain of the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and the last descendant of the poet, died in Leipzig, April 15, 1885. By his will he bequeathed the Goethe house, its art and scientific collections, to the Grand Duke ; its literary treasures were left to the Grand Duchess Sophie, a princess of the house of Orange, whose intelligence and interest in literature make her a worthy successor of the Duchess Amalia. On the 9th of June a call was issued, in- viting all friends of Goethe literature to unite in the formation of a Goethe Society in Weimar. The meeting was held on June 20 and 21, in the guild house of the Crossbowmen, an organization of which the poet was a member. More than one hundred eminent scholars and university professors assembled from all parts of Germany and Austria to do honor to the poet. The Goethe archives, which had been so long the object of ardent interest to all scholars, had at last been opened, and the results of the investigation were to be made known. The Society was constituted with a long list of active members, including the Empress of Germany, the granddaughter of Carl August, the Princes and the Grand Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, the Princes of Reuss-Gera, of Meiningen, and of Saxony ; the Ministers Von Gossler of Berlin, Von Gerber of Dresden, and numerous foreign scholars of Naples, Rome, Athens, and America. The Grand Duke Carl Alexander of Saxe-Weimar INTRODUCTION. VU accepted the office of patron of the society. Dr. Simson, Presi- dent of the Imperial Court of Leipzig, formerly President of the German Parliament, was chosen the first President. The Executive Committee consists of Professor W. Scherer of Berlin, First Vice-President ; General-Intendant Von Loen of Weimar, Second Vice-President ; Professor Kuno Fischer of Heidelberg ; Paul Heyse, the novelist, of Munich ; Von Loeper of Berlin ; Von Beaulieu-Marconnay of Dresden; Eumelin, Chancellor of the University of Tubingen, of Stuttgart ; Professor Erich Schmidt of Vienna; Eggeling, Curator of the University of Jena; and Ruland of "Weimar. A business board was also selected. Herr Commerzienrath Moritz was appointed Treas- urer of the Society. The objects of the organization are to promote a knowledge of the whole domain of Goethe's intellectual activity and in- fluence, and to promote special investigations in Goethe liter- ature. Annual meetings will be held for the presentation of papers and interchange of views. The Goethe Jahrbuch will become the organ of the society, in which will be published much of the fresh material discovered in the archives. The volume for 1886 will contain the letters of Goethe to his sister Cornelia, and to Behrisch in Dessau ; also, the hitherto un- published letters of the Frau Rath (Goethe's mother) to the Duchess Amalia, from the state archives, the arrangement of which has been entrusted to Archivrath Burkhardt. A sub- sequent volume will contain the letters of Goethe from Italy to the Frau von Stein, and also his correspondence with his wife. The Society will establish a Goethe museum and library, with facilities for investigation, and seek to complete the Goethe archives. The Grand Duchess has determined to inaugurate two monumental works : (1.) A complete life of Goethe, based on his diaries and the additional material contained among his papers. This has been undertaken by that most eminent Goethe scholar, Privy-Councillor von Loeper. (2.) A new authentic edition of his works, based upon the collation of all VUl INTRODUCTION. existing manuscripts, whicli will devolve upon Yon Loeper, Scherer, and Erich Schmidt, the last of whom has resigned his professorship in the University of Vienna to accept the Directorship of the Goethe Archives. At a later session of the Society, Herr von Loeper and Pro- fessor Scherer presented the results of their examination of the archives. Six cases were fiUed with the manuscripts. One contained accounts of domestic expenses, the bills of butchers and bakers, preserved with that order which was character- istic of the poet ; a second contained careful notes, from the highest authorities, together with the results of his own obser- vations in science ; two other cases contained manuscripts of his works, journals, and letters. Von Loeper gave a general view of the contents of two cases out of the six, which he had been able to examine. The material may be divided into three parts : (1.) Manuscripts of Goethe's works ; (2.) Letters ; and (3.) Diaries. I. The existing manuscripts, while not presenting new and complete works, reveal the methods of study of the poet, the vast field of his intellectual activit}^, and the origin, growth, and connection of his various writings. They begin with the unique copy of the " Hollenfahrt Jesu Christi," written in 1765, and published in "Die Sichtbaren" in 1766, and end with his last great work, the Second Part of Faust, in 1831, thus coveiing a period of sixty-six years. Many manuscripts most eagerly anticijoated were not found, among them the original of Faust. Count Friedrich Stolberg, in describing a visit to Weimar in 1775, speaks of a glorious afternoon when Goethe read " his half-completed Faust, a noble poem," to the Duchesses and himself. This manuscript, which Goethe carried with him to Italy, would settle many questions in Faust criticism. The preliminary sketch of " Wilhelm Meis- ter," spoken of by Herder, and its earlier form, as well as the first version of " Tasso," are missing. Among the treasures revealed, however, from the pre-Weimar days, are a fine manu- script of " Der Ewige Jude " ; the first manuscript of " Gotz von INTRODUCTION. ix Berlicbingen"; a hitherto unknown collection of dialogues, in one of which Frau Aja plays a part (October 14, 1774); and a volume of youthful poems, parts of which are known through copies in the possession of the Herders and Frau von Stein ; also, three versions of the " Mitschuldigen " (probably later revisions), and several manuscripts of "Prometheus," one copied by Lenz, and one by the Fraulein von Gochhausen. Belonging to the period of his residence in "Weimar are copies of his minor dramatic works, among them three manuscripts of the " Triumph der Emptindsamkeit." From the period of Goethe's residence in Italy there are versions of the " Iphigenie " in prose and in iambics, " Tasso," and the " Roman Elegies " complete, in his own autograph. Of later date are three autograph manuscripts of the " Vene- tian Epigrams," with many hitherto unpublished ; some of these are of an erotic nature, others were directed against Lavater, and still others were anti-clerical in spii-it. A manu- script of the " Grosskophta " as an opera was also found, and " Elpenor " in two versions. Of the period of Goethe's con- nection with Schiller, there is the manuscript of " Hermann und Dorothea," copied probably by A. W. Schlegel, with cor- rections by Goethe. There are also numerous smaller works and fragments, — among the latter the beginning of a tragedy in five acts, called " Das Madchen von Oberkirch," in which Goethe treats the phenomena of the French Revolution. He located the action in the Alsatian village of Oberkirch, with the surroundings of which he was familiar. There is also a beautiful manuscript of that ambitious fragment, the "Achilleis," in which Goethe, filled with the spirit of his Homeric studies, undertook a classical epic, in continuation of the Iliad, but stopped with the first canto. A plan, how- ever, has been found, embracing the action of the six books originally contemplated. Goethe's enthusiasm for Homer is further shown by essays in the translation of various passages in hexameters, and even a critical interpretation of an obscvu'e passage. X INTRODUCTION. His productivity is shown by the vast materials accumulated in his later studies. Among these are poems and collectanea for the " Divan," all in autograph, and nearly all supplied with dates. These exhibit various readings and rejected passages, and are of great value in the interpretation and historical criticism of the verses as they stand. He even attempted a " Historisches Volksbuch" (1808). Numberless minor poems and fragments were found, occasionally recreations of the charming evenings of the literary "circles," but more often the records of more serious work. Among them are additional Zahme Xenien, invectives, political stanzas, attacks on persons. Erotica, etc. There is an attack upon Wolfgang Menzel, whose bitter hostility could not always leave Goethe unmoved. He is called a " Potenzierter Merkel." There is also an addi- tion to the poem, " Es ist ein Schuss gefallen," with references to Friedrich Schlegel, and Miiller, the romanticist and pub- licist, who followed his friend to the Roman communion. Professor Scherer, in his investigations, gave esjDecial atten- tion to the manuscripts of " Faust." He found, what cannot be a surprise, from Goethe's own expressions, that the poet him- self had attempted an adaptation of the First Part to the stage. His plan for its representation included in the first act the Dedication, Prelude, and Prologue in Heaven. Music was introduced skilfully and effectively in many passages ; as in the abridged monologue, and in the scene of Faust's covenant with the evil spirit, when the choir of spirits is heard contend- ing with one another, " He will sign," " He will not sign," singing in chorus, until Mephistopheles cries, "Bliit ist ein ganz besonder Saft." Goethe's taste for the opera, and his estimate of the capacity of music to heighten dramatic effect, are shown by this treatment. This scheme or arrangement is often styled in the manuscript " melodrama." As early as 1810, Goethe considered the pre- sentation of " Faust " on the stage, and requested Zelter to write the music for the Easter Song and the Slumber Song of INTRODUCTION. xi the Spirits, " Schwindet ihr dunkeln Wolbungen droben"; but the musician declined, and Goethe dropped the matter for the time. Later, he was very angry at the proposed production of "Faust" in Weimar in 1828, before consultation with him, " as though he were no longer alive, and without asking what view he might have in the manner of its presentation." For the Helena scenes there is the most abundant material, and there is a manuscript, " Helena im Mittelalter, ein satyrisches- Drama," which later bears the odd title, " Satyr-Drama, eine Episode zu Faust." The inference is drawn from this, that Goethe's earliest work on the "Helena" continued, in the ancient metres, until the appearance of " Faust." The results of this examination are in no respect complete or final. II. The second division includes the letters to and from Goethe. These cover an extended period, — from his student days in Leipzig to his late Weimar days. New and unexpected materials are here presented. Of high value in determining the history of Goethe's life, and his relations to his family, are his letters to his sister Cornelia. Strehlke, in his cata- logue of Goethe's letters, recently completed, says, " No single letter of Goethe to his sister or his father is known " ; but here we have a welcome collection of letters to his sister, the companion of his first triu.mph, whose loss he so greatly mourned. There are also letters to Behrisch in Dessau, the friend of his university days in Leipzig, from whom he parted with so much regret. There are also three letters written while an advocate in Frankfort, and thirty- eight letters to the Minister von Fritsch. The series of letters which will attract most attention are those to his wife, covering twenty-five years in an unbroken succession, from 1792 to her death in 1816. They are described as evincing a "constant ardor and sincerity of feeling, and to afford an irrefutable view of Goethe's domestic happiness. He communicates to her all the interests of his life, his poetic undertakings, visits, and moods, and shows a faithful interest in her domestic duties. He is always the kind, loving, attentive husband. Amid the xii INTRODUCTION. excitements of Ms campaign in France, he longs for his home, and, for his highest happiness, wishes his dear one with him in Verdun." There are a hundred and eighty letters from Goethe's mother, in one collection, and additional letters in- corporated in the current correspondence of each year ; also, numerous letters, mostly notes, from Frau von Stein, serving to show tlie character of their later intercourse. There are letters of Frau von Grotthus, Frau von Eybenberg, Amalie von Imhof, and F. Gaspers, and single remembrances from Lotte Buff (1798) and Lili Schouemann (1801). Goethe's letters from the Grand Duke Carl August are pre- served intact in the collection, and show how unsatisfactory the present edition is. This correspondence, edited by Dr. Vogel, was published in 1863 in an incomplete form. It had been withheld, owing to two expressions of Goethe, — one in a letter of November 17, 1787, from Eome : " Burn, I pray you, my letters at once, that they may be read by no one ; with this hope I can write more freely." Before his departure for Switzerland in 1797, he said: "I have burned all the letters sent to me since 1772, from a positive disinclination to the publication of the silent march of friendly intercourse." His views afterward changed, and he published parts of his correspondence covering this period. The letters preserved in the Goethe archives show that the destruction of his corre- spondence was not so general as his language would imply. Of particular interest at the present time is the discovery of Carlyle's letters to the poet, and copies of Goethe's letters in reply. The Schiller correspondence suffered from the arbitrary and capricious suppressions of its editors, and the fourth edition was necessary to give it in substantial correctness. Even in its present form there is much to be desired. Goethe himself says that letters are the most valuable memorial of a man. His correspondence grew with his fame ; his interest extended to the most varied branches of literature, art, antiquities, and science ; and letters from scholars, poets, and artists multiplied (( ^$^^'^ TTNIVK INTRODUCTION- xiii during the later period of his life. They present his relations to individuals, the growth of his opinions, his judgments of men and things, and the inception and progress of his works. Political events in Europe do not escape him. Discoveries, facts, and theories are mirrored in his all-reflecting mind ; the vi^orks of contemporary and past writers are estimated ; and thus his letters become a contribution to a knowledge of the literary history of his time. III. The third division contains Goethe's diaries. These begin in 1776, before the first year of his residence in Weimar had passed, and extend to the 16th of March, 1832, but six days before his death. They present a rich material for estimat- ing the poet's life, the existence of which was entirely unsus- pected. Meagre and inaccurate extracts from certain portions had appeared, limited in range and time ; but the originals are presented here entire. There is, however, a blank between, the years 1782 and 1796, interrupted by two brief beginnings in 1791 and 1793. These journals are at first short, condensed notices, which increase in fulness and richness of contents as his life advances. From 1817 they average nearly four vol- umes a year. Important events are recorded with great ac- curacy. Days like those which followed Schiller's death contain no entry. These diaries furnish means for determin- ing the dates of Goethe's works, since little that the poet wrote went at once to the press. Many works were for years under his hand ; they were begun, discontinued, resumed, modified, and completed, and their final form dilfered greatly from the original plan. The art collections are extensive, and of great interest. They contain plaster casts; original drawings of the old mas- ters, Netherlaud art being especially represented; and even sketches of early Italian painters ; many drawings of personal friends, such as Tischbein, Meyer, Hackert, Kraaz, Angelica KaufmanU, and Kniep ; a rich collection of majolicas; Italian medals, two thousand in number, some of which are unique ; numerous plaques, two hundred Italian and German bronzes. XIV INTRODUCTION. antiques, and a large number of engravings. To these general art collections have been added, by gift of the heirs at law (the families of Count Henckel von Donnersmark and the Vulpius family), the personal memorials of the poet, consist- ing of portraits, busts, medallions, and casts of the same. Among these are portraits of Goethe by Angelica Kaufmann and Tischbein, and also a graceful portrait, probably repre- senting Christiane. Two portraits of Goethe are given in our volume ; one representing him in youth, before the publication of any except his earliest works ; the other engraved from Eauch's bust, which was made in August, 1820, when Goethe was seventy-one. Both are interesting, and neither is much known in America, although reduced copies of the bust are common. A partial bibliography of works relating to Goethe's youth will be found at the close of Professor White's lecture. We add here a more general, but still very incomplete bibliography, compiled by Mr. John Ed- mauds of the Philadelphia Mercantile Library, for the benefit of the frequenters of that institution. INTRODUCTION. XV EEADING NOTES GN" GOETHE. The following notes and references will be found per- tinent, and will be useful to any who may wish to pursue a course of reading on these subjects : — A. — Works of Goethe. Autobiography ; or, Truth and Poetry, from my Life, edited by P. Godwin. New York, 1846-47. 2 v. Bride of Corinth, with Anster's Faust. Campaign in France, translated by R. Fairie. London, 1858. Same, in his Miscellaneous Travels, pp. 71-247. Correspondence between Schiller and Goethe from 1794-1805, edited by L. D. Schmitz. London, 1877. 2 v. Dramatic "Works ; comprising Faust, Iphigenia in Tauris, Torquato Tasso, Egmont, and Gotz von Berlichingen. London, 1851. Egmont ; a Tragedy in Five Acts. Boston, 1841. Elective Affinities. Boston, 1872. Same, in Novels and Tales. Reviewed in Revue des Deux Mondes, C. 863. Eleonora, with a Poetic Epistle from Werter to Charlotte. London, 1787. Essays on Art, translated by S. G. "Ward. New York, 1862. Faust, eine Tragbdie. Stuttgart, 1867. Faustus, a Dramatic Mystery ; the Bride of Corinth, the iirst "Wal- purgis Night, translated and illustrated with Notes by J. Anster. London, 1835. Faust ; a Tragedy in Two Parts, translated by J. Birch, with en- gravings by Brain after Retsch. London, 1839. Same, translated, with Notes, by C. T. Brooks. [Part I. only.] Boston, 1856. Same, translated by L. Filmore. London, 1847. xvi INTRODUCTION. Same, translated into Verse by J. Galvan. Dublin, 1860. Same, translated, with Notes, by A. Hayward. Boston, 1859. Part I. " Previous to Taylor's translation Hayward's prose ren- dering was the leading ■work consulted by scholars on account of its full notes and lengthy introduction." — Literary World, XII. 273. Same, translated by T. Martin. Edinburgh, 1865. Reviewed in North British Review. XLIV. 50. Same, translated in Rime by C. Kegan Paul. London, 1873. Ke- viewed in Revue des Deux Mondes, CXLIII. 921. Same, translated into the Original Metres by Bayard Taylor. Bos- ton, 1871. 2 V. Has a Preface and extended Notes. " Bayard Taylor's notes and comments are exhaustive, and imist be con- sulted by any student of the subject who wishes to go to the bottom of disputed points. His translations are quoted even by the latest and best German commentators in proof of the meaning of doubtful passages." — Lilcrary World, XII. 273. Same. The Text, with English Notes, Essays, and Verse Transla- tions, by E. J. Turner. London, 1882. The First Part only. Same. Shelley's Translations of the Prologue in Heaven and of the May-day Night scene, may be found in his Poetical Works. London, 1877. IV. 284. Same. The Liberal. London, 1822. I. 121. Boyesen's Goethe and Schiller has a full and elaborate Commentary on the two parts of Faust, pp. 151-285. The original Faust-Legend may be found in Roscoe's German Novel- ists, I. 256. Faust and Marguerite. V. 35. German Emigrants in his Novels and Tales. Good "Women in Ms Novels and Tales. Gotz of Berlichingen, with the Iron Hand, an Historical Drama. Dublin, 1799. Gbtz von Berlichingen in Ms Dramatic Works. Herman and Dorothea, translated by Ellen Frothingham. Illus- trated. Boston, 1870. Same, translated into English Hexameters, with an lutroductoiy Essay. London, 1849. Same, translated by T. C. Porter. New York, 1854. INTRODUCTION. xvii Ipliigenia in Tauris, translated by W. Taylor, in his Historic Sur- vey of German Poetry. Loudon, 1830. III. 249. Same in his Dramatic Works. Margaret Fuller in her Life Without, p. 51, gives a sketch of this Drama, with Extracts. Letters from Switzerland, in his Miscellaneous Travels, pp. 1-67. Letters to Leipzig Friends, edited by 0. Jahn, translated by K. Slater. London, 1866. Meister's Travels ; or. The Eenuuciants, a Novel. Boston, 1851. Memoirs wntten by himself. New York, 1824. The same as the Autobiography above, but another transla- tion, and contains only fifteen of the twenty books. It contains biographical notices of the principal persons mentioned in the memoirs. "A most wretched and unfaithful translation." — Quartcrhj Review. Minor Poetry, a Selection from his Songs, Ballads, and other lesser Poems, translated by W. G. Thomas. Philadelphia, 1859. Miscellaneous Travels ; comprising Letters from Switzerland, the Campaign in France, the Siege of Mainz, and a Tour on the Ehine. London, 1882. Novels and Tales : Elective Affinities, Sorrows of Werther, German Emigrants, Good Women. London, 1854. Poems and Ballads, translated by Aytoun and Martin. New York, 1859. Poems, translated in the Original Metres by Paul Dyi-sen. New York, 1878. Poems and Translations from the German, by C. R. Lambert. London, 1850. pp. 81-98. Peynard the Fox. London, 1845. Sammtliche Werke. Stuttgart, 1850. 30 v. in 18. Schriften. Eeutlinger, 1784. 2 v. Select Minor Poems, translated by J. S. Dwight. Select Poems, in Baskerville's Poetry of Germany. New Yci'k, 1857. Contains a number of Goethe's Poems in the original, with English verse translations on the opposite page. Selections from Dramas, translated, with Introduction, by A. Swan- wick. Loudon, 1843. Siege of Mainz, in his Miscellaneous Travels, pp. 251-287. h xviii INTRODUCTION. * Son-ows of Werter, translated by "W. Bender. London, 1801, Stella : a Drama in Five Acts, translated by Benjamin Thompson. German Theatre, V. 6. London, 1801. Torquato Tasso, in his Dramatic Works. A Tour on the Ehine, etc., in his Miscellaneous Travels, pp. 291- 424. Truth aud Poetry, same as the Autobiography above. The First Walpurgis Night. (The English version by "W. Bar- tholomew.) Compiled by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Bos- ton [no date]. Werther, Trad. nouv. et Notice biog. et litt. de L. Enault. Paris, 1855. West-Easterly Divan, translated, with Introduction and Notes, by J. Weiss. Boston, 1877. Reviewed in Blackwood, CXXXII. 742. Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. London, 1873. Eeviewed by D. A. Wasson in Atlantic Monthly, p. 16. B. — Works on Goethe. De Stael, Madame. Goethe and his Dramas in her Germany. \ London, 1814. I. 265, II. 138. Taylor, W. Review of Goethe's Works in his Historic Survey of German Poetry. London, 1830. III. 242-379. Contains a V Translation of Iphigenia entire, and large portions of other works. Carlyle, T. Death of Goethe, in his Criticisms and Miscellaneous Essays. London, 1872. IV. 42. . Goethe in his Criticisms and Miscellaneous Essays. Lon- don, 1872. I. 172. . Goethe's Works and Character, in his Criticisms and Mis- cellaneous Essays. Boston, 1838. I. 220. — , Goethe's Helena, in his Criticisms and Miscellaneous Essays. Boston, 1838. I. 162. — . Same. London, 1872. I. 126. — . Goethe's Works, in his Criticisms and Miscellaneous Essays. London, 1872. IV. 132. — . Life of SchiUer. New York, 1846. Describes the friend- ship between Goethe and Schiller, pp. Ill, 273. INTRODUCTION. XIX Eckermann, J. P. Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of his Life, translated by S. M. Fuller [Ossoli]. Boston, 1839. Menzel, "W. Goethe, in his German Literature, translated by C. C. Felton. Boston, 1840. III. 1. Austin, S. Characteristics of Goethe, frora the German of Falk, von Miiller, &c., with Notes. Paris, 1841. 2 v. Retsch, M. Illustrations of Goethe's Faust. London, 1843. Characteristics of Men of Genius. Goethe. London, 1846. Jefl'rey, Francis. Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, mi his Contributions to the Edinburgh Review. Paris, 1846. p. 104. Ulrici, H. Goethe in Relation to Shakespeare, in his Shakespeare's Dramatic Art. London, 1846. p. 512. Longfellow, H. W. Goethe, m Ais Hyperion. Boston, 1849. p. 155. Moschzisker, F. A. Goethe, in his Guide to German Literature. London, 1850. II. 95-170. Emerson, R. W. Goethe, or the "Writer, in his Representative Men. Boston, 1851. p. 209. Doring, H. J. W. von Goethe's Biographic. Jena, 1853. Bancroft, G. The Age of Schiller and Goethe, in his Literary and Historical Miscellanies, p. 167. New York, 1855. Contains translations of several of Goethe's poems, p. 231. Lewes, G. H. The Life and Works of Goethe, with Sketches of his Age and Contemporaries. London, 1875. 2 v. , Same. Boston, 1856. 2 v. "Mr. Lewes's main work was done a long time ago, when com- paratively few of Goethe's letters were printed. And the re- vision mentioned in the Preface of 1875 was not a thorough, adequate revision." — T. W. Lystcr. Masson, David. Shakespeare and Goethe, and The Three Devils, Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's, in his Essays, Biographical and Critical. Cambridge, 1856. pp. 453. . The Three Devils. London, 1874. pp. 1-124. Godwin, Parke. Goethe, in his Out of the Past, p. 341. New York, 1870. Taillandier, Saint-Rene. Goethe, in Nouvelle Biographic Generale. Paris, 1857. XXI. 27. Metcalfe, Frederick. Goethe, in his History of German Literature. London, 1858. pp. 431-453. XX INTRODUCTION. Arnim, Bettine von. Goethe's Correspondence with a Child. Boston, 1859. For a review of this work, by M. E. "VV. Sher- wood, see Atlantic Monthly, XXXI. 216. >/ Ossoli, Margaret Fuller. Goethe, in her Life Without and Life Within. Boston [1859]. p. 23. De Quincey, T. Goethe, in his Biographical Essays. Boston, 1860. p. 227. Heine, W. The Romantic School. New York, 1882. The chap- ter on " German Literature to the Death of Goethe," treats largely of Goethe and his relations to Herder, Lessing, the Schlegels, and others. StefFens, H. Story of My Career. Boston, 1863. This book was subsequently issued as " German University Life." Merivale, Herman. Voltaire, Rousseau, and Goethe, in his His- torical Studies. London, 1865. p. 130. Caro, E. La PhUosophie de Goethe. Revue des Deux Mondes. Paris, 1865-66. LIX., LX. 147, 301, LXI. 623, LXII. 386. Belaui, W. C. R. Goethe und sein Liebeleben. Historischer No- vellenkreis. Leipzig, 1866. 3 v. Calvert, G. H. Weimar, in his Fii'st Year in Europe. Boston, 1866. pp. 165-198. . Goethe : His Life and Works. An Essay. Boston, 1872. pp. 276. . Goethe, in his Coleridge, Shelley, and Goethe. Boston, 1880. p. 261. Conway, M. D. A Hunt after Devils, in Harper's Magazine, March, 1869. XXXVIIL 540. Contains notices of places and incidents connected with Faust and with Goethe's house. Robinson, H. Crabb. Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence. Boston, 1869. 2 v. Blaze de Bury, H. Madame de Stein et Goethe. Revue des Deux Mondes. Paris, 1870. LXXXVI. 900. Konewka, Paul. Elustrations of Goethe's Faust. Boston, 1871. Twelve silhouette designs with Taylor's translations. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, K. Goethe and Mendelssohn (1821-1831), translated, with additions, by M. E. von Glehn. London, 1872. Mezieres, A. Une Page de la Vie de Goethe. Ses Affinites Elec- tives. Revue des Deux Mondes. Paris, 1872. INTRODUCTION. xxi Gostwick, James, and R. Harrison. Outlines of German Literature. London, 1873. pp. 221-299, 440. Helmboltz, H. On Goethe's Scientific Researches, in Ids Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects. 1st ed. London, 1873. pp. 33-59. . Ueber Goethe's naturwissenschaftliche Arbeiten, in Ms Populiire wissenschaftliche Vortrage. Braunschweig, 1876. pp. 33-53. Phelps, Almira L. Life and Writings of Goethe, in her Reviews and Essays. Philadelphia, 1873. p. 180. Lazarus, Emma. Alide : an Episode of Goethe's Life. Phila- delphia, 1874. Huttonj__R^_H._ Goethe and His Influence, in Ms Essays in Liter- ary Criticism. Philadeljjhia, 1876. pp. 1-97. Sime, James. Lessing. Boston, 1877. 2 v. Exhibits the literary relation of Goethe and Lessing, with the latter's criticisms on Goethe's Works. Hayward, A. Goethe, in Foreign Classics for English Readers. Philadelpliia [London, 1878]. Ai-nold, M. A French Critic on Goethe, in Ms Mixed Essays. New York, 1879. p. 274. Barine, Arvide. La Legende de Faust. Revue des Deux Mondes. Paris, 1879. CXLII. 921. Boyesen, H. H. Goethe and Schiller : their Lives and Works, including a Commentary on Faust. New York, 1879. Browning, Oscar. Goethe, in Encyclopaedia Britannica. 9th ed. ' London, 1879. X. 721. Contains an extended list of German authorities on Goethe. Taylor, Bayard. Goethe, and Goethe's Faust, in Ms Studies in German Literature. New York, 1879. pp. 304-387. Goethe, Catherine E. (Goethe's mother). Correspondence with Goethe, Lavater, Wieland et al., translated, with Biographical Sketches and Notes, by Alfred S. Gibbs. New York, 1880. pp. 263. Grimm, H. Life and Times of Goethe, translated by S. H. Adams. Boston, 1880. pp. 559. Japp, Alexander H. Goethe, in his German Life and Literature. Loudon [1881]. pp. 269-379. xxii INTRODUCTION. Stevens, Abel. Madame de Stael : a Study of her Life and Times. New York, 1881. The second volume contains notices of Weimar and its literary celebrities. •^ Blackie, J. S. Wisdom of Goethe. Edinburgh, 1883. pp. 246. Diintzer, H. Life of Goethe, translated by T. W. Lyster. New York [Loudon], 1884. pp. 796. Lewes, M. A. Three Months in Weimar, in Jier Essays and Leaves from a Note-Book, by George Eliot. New York, 1884. p. 226. Gives an account of Goethe's life and associations at Weimar. Nevinson, H. Herder and His Times. London, 1884. r Seeley, J. K. Goethe, in Contemporary Eeview. August, October, November, 1884. XLVI. 166, 488, 653. C. — Papers on Goethe, in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. (D. Appleton & Co., New York.) Goethe's Theory of Colors, by W. T. Harris. I. 63. Goethe's Faust, Letters on, by H. C. Brockmeyer. I. 178, II. 114. Rosenkranz, Johann Karl Friedrich. On the Second Part of Faust. Translated by D. J. Snider. I. 65. . On the Social Romances. Translated by T. Davidson. II. 120, 215. . On the Wilhelm Meister. Translated by T. Davidson. IV. 145. . On the Composition of the Social Romances. Translated by D. J. Snider. IV. 268. . On Goethe's Maerchen. Translated by Anna C. Brackett. V. 219. . On the Faust. Translated by Anna C. Brackett. IX. 48, 225, 401. — . On Faust and Margaret. Translated by Anna C. Brackett. X. 37. — . On the Second Part of Faust. Translated by Anna C. Brackett. XI. 113. Goethe's Essay on Da Vinci's Last Supper. I. 243. Goethe's Essay on the Laokoon (tr.). II. 208. Goethe and German Fiction, F. G. Fairfield. IX. 303. Goethe's Song of the Spirit over the Water, F. R. Marvin. X. 215. Goethe's Das Marchen, by Gertrude Garrigues. XVII. 383. INTRODUCTION. xxiii The Lectures actually delivered at the School of Philosophy in the summer of 1885 were those in the following list, in the order indicated by the dates. CONCORD SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY. SEVENTH SESSION. LECTURES AND SUBJECTS, 1885. I. Goetlie's Genius and Work. July 16. Goethe s Self-Culture. By Mr. John Albee, of New Castle, N. H. " 18. Goethe and his " 3fdhrch€n." By Eev. Dr. F. H. Hedge, of Cambridge, Mass. " 24. Goethe's Relation to Kant and Spinoza in Philosophy. By Dr. F. L. SoLDAN, of St. Louis. " 20. Goethe s Faust. By Professor Harris. " 21. Goethe's Youth. By Professor H. S. White, of Cornell University. " 17. The "Ewig-Weibliche." By Mrs. E. D. Cheney, of ~ Boston. " 22. Goethe's Faust. By Mr. D. J. Snider, of Cincinnati. " 20. Goethe's Relation to English Literature. By Mr. F. B. Sanborn. " 28. Goethe as a Man of Science. A Conversation conducted by Mr. Snider and Professor Harris. " 27. The Novellettes in "Wilhelm Meister." By Professor Harris. *' 28. "Wilhelm Meister" as a Whole. By Mr. D. J. Snider. " 18. Goethe and Schiller. By Rev. Dr. Bartol, of Boston. Aug. 1. The Women of Goethe. By Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, of Boston. July 22. The Elective Affinities. By Mr. S. H. Emery, Jr., of Concord, Mass. XXIV INTRODUCTION. July 25. Goetlie's Titanism. By Professor Thomas Davidson, of Orange, N. J. " 23. Goethe at Weimar. By Professor W. T. Hewett, of Corne]l University. " 21. Child-Life as portrayed in GocflvJs Works. By Mrs. Caroline K. Sherman, of Chicago. " 27. Goethe as Playivright. By Mr. William 0. Partridge, of Brooklyn, N. Y. " 29. The Style of Goethe. By Mr. C. W. Ernst, of Boston. II. A Symposium : Is Pantheism the Legitimate Outcome of Modem Science ? Lectures by Eev. Dr. A. P. Peabody (July 29) and Mr. John FiSKE (July 29) of Cambridge, Professor Harris (July 30), Dr. G. H. HowisoN of California (July 31), Dr. P. E. Abbott (July 31) of Cambridge, and Dr. Montgomery of Texas (July 31). Readings from Thoreau, July 24, by Mr. H. G. 0. Blake, of "Worcester. The Lectures on Pantlieism appeared in the " Jour- nal of Speculative Philosophy" for October, 1885, except Mr. Fiske's on " The Idea of God," which has been published as a separate volume by Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, who publislied in the same way, in 1884, Mr. Fiske's Lecture on " The Destiny of Man." The Lectures of 1884, on "The Genius and Character of Emerson," were published in a vol- ume by J. Ft. Osgood and Company, and are now sold by Ticknor and Company, who publish the present volume ; and members of the School are requested to order the volumes of the publishers, and not of the Faculty of the School. The Eighth Session of the School will open on Wednesday, July 14, 1886, and will continue two INTRODUCTION. xxv weeks. The lectures and conversations of the first week (July 14-21) will be on Dante and his Divine Comedy ; those of the second week (July 22-29), on Plato and his Infiuenee in Philosophy. The Lecturers will be mainly the same as in 1885, but with some omissions and important additions. It is intended to publish a volume of the Lectures on Dante in 1886. R B. S. CoNCOED, December 1, 1885. j.tSE L/g^^ Of '/j:?;^ -.-^.^.x't^^,.,> \l% GOETHE IN YOUTH. U university)) THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. I. GOETHE'S YOUTH. By HORATIO S. WHITE. It will readily be observed that Goethe's life may be divided into distinct periods, each defined by some change in his outward relations, and each characterized by some change in his inner develop- ment. The great divisions which would naturally be made are : his youth before the removal to Wei- mar ; the decade in that Thuringiau capital preced- ing his departure for Italy, — a journey which forms the uiost significant epoch in his life ; the period of mature manhood following, which was passed in the society of Schiller ; and, finally, the long and fruitful old age during the first third of the present century. Leaving to others the task of tracing Goethe's later achievements in diverse fields, — where his tireless energy and his perennial vigor of spirit display him as the master of prose, the incomparable poet, the 1 2 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. literary despot, the histrionic magnate, the faithful prime-minister, the profound investigator and gifted discoverer, and the unwearied sage, — it shall be my attempt to depict him in his early youth, and in that perhaps most fascinating time of his young manhood embracing the dawning consciousness of varied powers which came to him at Strassburg, the stimulating intercourse with Herder, the impulse toward the study of Greek and English literature, the fleeting fervor for Gothic architecture, the sad but lovely idyl of Sessenheim, the tempestuous ardor of the Wetzlar entanglement, and the first flush of creative genius breaking forth in " Gotz," in "Wer- ther," in his matchless lyrics, and in the beginnings of " Faust." For the study of this period we have ample sources. It is but a few years since a work appeared under the title, " Der junge Goethe," edited by Professor Bernays of Munich, and comprising the correspond- ence and literary proceeds of the first twenty-five years of Goethe's life. The editor had consulted the original manuscripts and first editions, and had in most cases carefully restored the early orthography, which had been modernized in the later revisions. All the spice and raciness of Goethe's youthful style, the strongly flavored South-German vernacular, the erratic spelling and still more erratic j)unctuation, have been preserved in their primitive freshness. Specially valuable is the series of letters in which his whole outward and inner life is mirrored witli GOETHE'S YOUTH. 3 all the warmth of unreserve which marked the episto- lary literature of the last century. To this useful work let us add Goethe's Autobi- ography, covering precisely the same period, but composed at a much later date. " The question whether one should write his own biography," says Goethe, " is quite malapropos. I consider him who does so to be the most courteous of men." In his Autobiography he reports that throughout his life he could not refrain from embodying in a written form his personal experiences, whether to relieve his soul, or to establish his conceptions of external things. " Everything which has hitherto been known as mine," he concludes, " forms there- fore a great fragmentary confession, to make which complete this trifling work is a daring attempt." To Eckermann he said, in 1824 : " The most im- portant part of the individual's life is his develop- ment, which in my case is comprised in the detailed account of ' Wahrheit und Dichtung.' " And in 1831 he declared that the particular facts narrated in his Autobiography served merely to confirm a general reflection, a higher truth. It is interesting to note, from a comparison between that work and the original sources, that, apart from some unessential inaccuracies and inconsistencies, Goethe's memory retained a trustworthy impression of his early experiences. It is true that discrepan- cies of detail have often crept into the relation ; that 4 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. events may have been described in a manner some- what different from that of their actual occurrence ; that a character may have been idealized, and the outlines softened and harmonized to accord with the poet's purpose. But with all this, the portrayal of his youthful days must be considered thoroughly faithful to the inner meaning of his life. Other contemporary accounts of Goethe's early career exist, together with a vast mass of commen- tary ; but these two sources are sufficient to present him to us both as he unconsciously depicted him- self at the time, and as he afterwards consciously depicted himself to the world. It may be appropriate at this point to recall the principal features of Goethe's earlier years. We find in them an exceptional concurrence of fortunate cir- cumstances. Born into an advantageous environ- ment, an independent citizen of a free municipality, endowed with great natural gifts, possessed of va- ried accomplishments and acquirements, with com- fortable if not affluent means, coming into contact with many of the illustrious people of his day, and viewing many of the notable events of that period, his life assumes more than an individual interest, and becomes important and significant as typifying and illustrating his times. The Lisbon earthquake touches his young heart, and forces him to question the goodness of the Creator ; tlie French occupy Frankfort, and he is initiated into the political quarrels of tlie Seven Years' War ; in his rambles GOETHE'S YOUTH. 5 among the common people at their labors and their pastimes in that curious old town, he imbibes the spirit of their walk and conversation, which is after- wards reflected with fidelity in the popular scenes of his dramas ; the coronation of Joseph the Second unrolls before his eyes the pageantry of the pom- pous but hollow Empire ; as a student at Leipzig he skims round the circle of knowledge, and chants, "Da steh' ich nun, ich armer Thor, Und bin so klug als wie zuvor." The Dresden Gallery attracts and charms him with its pictorial treasures ; in Frankfort the gentle and devout mystic, Fraulein von Klettenberg, pursues with him studies in alchemy, and imbues him with the doctrines of pietism; and in 1770 he arrives at Strassburg, in season to behold the daughter of Maria Theresia crossing the Ehine on her triumphal and fateful journey toward the French capital. Let us here note a few characteristic passages from his earlier letters. Writing in 1764, at the age of fourteen, he describes himself as follows : — " One of my chief defects is, that I am somewhat impulsive. You know of course the choleric tempera- ment ; on the other hand, no one forgets an affront more readily than I. Furthermore, I am quite accustomed to be imperious ; but when I have nothing to say, I can let things go. However, I am quite willing to submit to authority when it is exercised as should be expected. One thing more, I am very impatient, and do not like to remain long in uncertainty." 6 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. To a home friend he writes from Leipzig, in 1765, describing his college life : — " What am I studying 1 Is it worth while asking ? Institutiones imperiales. Historiam juris. Pandectas, and a private course on the first seven and last seven titles of the Codex. For one does not need any more, the rest one forgets anyway. No, your obedient servant ! That we will let well alone. — Next week the courses in philos- ophy and mathematics begin. " Gottsched I have not yet seen. He has married again. You know it though. She is nineteen and he is sixty-five. She is four shoes tall and he seven. She is as thin as a herring and he as stout as a sack of feathers. — I 'm cutting a great figure here, but am no dandy yet, nor shall I become so. I have to be rather clever in order to get time to study. To parties, concerts, the theatre, at banquets, suppers, excursions, no end ! Ah, it's a precious time, but a precious business too! It costs ! The deuce, but my purse feels it. " Stop ! save us ! hold on ! Don't you see them flying 1 There go two Louis d'or marching off. Help ! There goes another. Heavens ! a couple more. Dimes with us are like cents with you. But yet one may live very cheaply here. I hope to get through the year on three hundred thalers — what do I say 1 — with two hundred thalers, N. B. Not counting in what has already gone to the dogs." At the end of his Leipzig course he writes back, in 1768, a giateful letter to Oeser, one of his in- structors : — GOETHE'S YOUTH. 7 " What do I not owe you, dearest Professor, that you have shown me the way to the true and beautiful, that you have rendered my heart susceptible to all that is stimulating? The taste which I have for what is beauti- ful, my knowledge, my insight, — do I not possess them all through you*? How true and clear the strange, almost unintelligible saying has become to me, that the work- shop of the great artist develops the budding philosopher, the budding poet, more than the auditorium of the sage and the critic ! Teaching does much, but encouragement does everything. Who among all my teachers has ever deemed me worthy of encouragement save you 1 Either all blame or all praise, and nothing can so destroy one's capacity. Encouragement after blame is sun after rain, fruitful growth. " You have taught me to be humble without being cast down, and to be proud without presumption. I could find no end of saying what you have taught me ; pardon my grateful heart this apostrophe ; I have that in com- mon with all tragic heroes, that my passion would fain pour forth in tirades, and woe to the one who gets in the way of my lava ! " These earlier years yielded an abundance of literary composition, the remnants of which reveal not indis- tinctly the coming lyric poet, while the two little comedies of that date betray the influence upon their composer of the lighter French dramatists, and per- haps of Wieland, with whose writings he was then quite captivated. One may also detect reflections in thin disguise of Goethe's juvenile affaires dc cceu?', the confession of which has already begun. 8 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. To Strassburg he comes at twenty. Of deep im- port was his sojourn in the quaint Alsatian city. It gave him the Cathedral, Herder, and Friederike. At Leipzig Goethe had been led to regard the term Gothic as the Greeks did Barbarian. An ignorant but declared enemy to that style of architecture, he is now confronted in silent reproach by the mighty and impressive minster. His conversion is as sudden and complete as that of Saul of Tarsus ; and in the rhapsodic essay, " Von Deutscher Baukunst," a memo- rial to the noble architect, Erwin von Steinbach, is contained his recantation. He bursts forth : — "With what an unexpected sensation did its aspect surprise me ! My soul was filled by an impression of grandeur and completeness, which, consisting of a thou- sand harmonious details, I was able indeed to taste and enjoy, without recognizing or explaining it. They say it is so with the joys of heaven ; and how often have I re- turned to partake of this joy of heaven upon earth, to comprehend the giant spirit of our elder brothers in their works ! How often has my eye, wearied by its searching inspection, been refreshed in cheerful repose by the even- ing twilight, when the countless parts melted into entire masses, and these, simple and grand, stood before my soul ! Then was revealed to me in gentle premonitions the genius of the great master. And how freshly it dawned u}X)n me in the vaporous splendor of the morn- ing ! How rejoiced I was to behold the great, harmonious masses enlivened into numberless minute details, as in works of eternal nature, down to the slightest fibre, every- GOETHE'S YOUTH. 9 thing form, and everything adapted to the whole ! how the firmly founded monstrous structure rises lightly into air ! how like network all, and yet for eternity ! " If these early and entliusiastic impressions gradu- ally faded, and well-nigh were extinguished by the stay in Italy, at the end of Goethe's life they were once more revived, less ardent, but with greater clear- ness, and again through the influence of his study of another worthy and imposing structure, the Cathedral at Cologne. Before meeting Herder in Strassburg, Goethe had not come into contact with a mind of the first order. Herder was five years older, had already gained repu- tation as a writer, and had recently returned to Ger- many from an extended tour in France and Holland. He writes to his Eiga friends, that, whereas before he had been frothy, vain, erratic, and whimsical, they would now find him more manly, ripe, developed, cosmopolitan, more of a Briton, and perchance thrice as ardent, instead of frivolous, Frenchy, and unstable. His relation to Goethe was similar to Goethe's rela- tions with Schiller at the first meeting in 1788, after the Italian journey. Said Schiller, in describing to Korner this interview : " Goethe is so far ahead of me, less perhaps in years than in experience of life and in self-development, that we shall never come together while en route." Goethe felt toward Herder the same modesty of immaturity ; nor did Herder, to whom his young admirer seemed then but a wald fledgling, seek to spare his sensibilities. Mercilessly 10 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. caustic, lashing Goethe's foibles and conceits, estab- lishing no such relations of mutual admiration and mutual palliation as then existed among many promi- nent German litterateurs, yet holding him by force of lofty character and a reach and range which Goethe fully acknowledged, a moral pedagogue of the finest type, and already a literary critic and historian of independent and original stamp, his was an influence to correct, to guide, and to inspire his fervid young follower. It is Herder, then, who expounds to Goethe the bearings of modern literature, who rails at the weaknesses of the contemporary native authors, who, fresh from Paris, yet sated with French materialism^ turns away from Voltaire and the philosophers, although for a time singling out Rousseau alone as the apostle of the day, and aids Goethe to check and overcome his own early tendencies, who introduces him to Swift, to Goldsmith, to Ossian, and to Shake- speare anew, who teaches him to know the Greeks, to appreciate the Hebrew bards, and to realize that poetry is not the possession of a learned caste, but the heritage of all mankind. In that initial year of their acquaintance Goethe thus addresses his new correspondent : — " I am compelled to write to you in the midst of my first sensations. Away with mantle and collar ! Your spicy letter is worth three years of every-daj experience. There is uo answer to it, and who could answer it 1 My whole self is thrilled, — that you may imagine, man, — and the vibration is still too great for my pen to move steadily. — GOETHE'S YOUTH. 11 Herder, Herder, abide to me what you are to me.' If I am destined to be your planet, I will be so, will be so gladly, will be so loyally. A friendly moon to the earth. But this — feel it absolutely — that I should rather be Mercury, the least, the smallest rather among seven, re- volving with you around one sun, than the first among five turning about Saturn. " Adieu, dear man ! I will not let you go. I will not leave you. Jacob wrestled with the angel of the Lord. Even if I should grow weary at it ! " The later relations of Herder and Goethe at "Wei- mar are beyond the scope of this paper, but we may recall that it was the latter's influence which secured for Herder his summons to the principal ecclesiastical position in the Duchy, and that, if their subsequent association was not always of the most cordial de- scription, the fault or the misfortune must be laid chiefly at the door of the Herders. Before leaving Strassburg, a word on Friederike. The well-known incidents of the story may be briefly narrated.1 A young man, fresh from the perusal of a literature of poetry and sentiment, wanders away on horseback with a student friend over the smiling meadows. In the picturesque little village of Sessen- heim he is presented to a pastor's family, whose sit- uation to his quick imagination soon reproduces, with strange parallelism, the environment of the Wakefield group in Goldsmith's " Vicar," a work which Herder ' Cf. "A Pilgrimage to Sesenheim," Lippincott's Magazine, February, 1884. 12 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. was introducing to Strassburg circles. Eeceived with full rural cordiality, he lingers and returns, and re- turns and lingers, until a fair lieart is fatally his own. The end of his academic course is the end of the idyl. The world demands him, and to the world he yields himself; and a summer of perilous sweetness has sad- dened one joyous life, and left in anotlier a lasting sting of remorse. Traces of this remorse one may find in the long deferred confession which Goethe's narrative contains, — a narrative which the aged poet could not dictate without signs of deep emotion. He depicts his conscious feeling that a withdrawal would be indefensible, his inability to break away from the beloved object even when he had in purpose re- nounced her, the pain of the final parting, and the heart-rending answer of Friederike to a farewell in writing. " Here for the first time," he continues, " I was guilty, I had keenly wounded a most beautiful soul ; and the period which followed was an almost unendurable time of gloomy repentance." He seeks for aid in poetry, and acknowledges that the two Marys in " Gotz " and " Clavigo," and the sorry roles which their lovers play, are the results of his remorse- ful contemplations. In the Gretchen of " Faust," too, one may recognize traits of the unaffected village maiden; and some of the most irresistible of Goethe's earlier poems were directly inspired by his acquaint- ance with Friederike Brion. What a gust of stormy fervor sweeps through the stanzas of " Willkommen und Abschied " ! GOETHE'S YOUTH. 13 " Es scUug mein Herz ; gescliwind zu Pferde, Und fort, wild, wie ein Held zur Schlacht! Der Abend wiegte schon die Erde, Und an den Bergen hieng die Nacht; Schon stund im Nebelkleid die Eiche, Wie ein gethiirmter Eiese, da, Wo Finsterniss aus dem Gestrauche Mit hundert schwarzen Angen sah. "Der Mend von seinem Wolkenhligel, Schien schlafrig aus dem Duft hervor; Die Winde schwangen leise Fliigel, Umsausten schauerlich mein Olir ; Die Nacht schuf tausend Ungeheuer — Doch tausendfacher war mein Muth; Mein Geist war ein verzehrend Feuer, Mein ganzes Herz zerfloss in Gluth." And again in the glad " Mayfest," where every line is a joyous heart-beat : — "Wie herrlich leuchtet Mir die Natur ! Wie glanzt die Sonne ! Wie lacht die Flur ! " Es dringen Bliiten Aus jedem Zweig, Und tausend Stimmen Aus dem Gestrauch. " Und Freud' und Wonne Aus jeder Brust. O Erd ! Sonne ! Gluck ! Lust ! " But Sessenheim was not enough ; for this way- wardness of Goethe ceased not with maturer years. That the poet has been his own accuser cannot ren- 14 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. der one's censure less severe. For this censure is undoubtedly induced by the feeling that, if a great genius should not need to be governed by the same laws perhaps as the ordinary mortal, this must hap- pen by reason of his rising superior to those laws, not by his falling subject to their jurisdiction and then claiming exemption by a special act of grace. Such censors feel that Goethe's life, despite its great intellectual sweep, does not mirror a moral career correspondingly pure and lofty. To guard an artless maiden against the involuntary devia- tions of her unshielded heart, to observe not merely the visible and outward, but the invisible spiritual sanctities of betrothal and wedlock, to despise not, even in externals, the righteous formalities of the marriage tie, — this much, at least, may be de- manded of that man before whom we are to bow the head. It is this fine "sense of conduct," to bor- row a happy phrase of Matthew Arnold, the lack of which many severe Western Puritans deplore in the author of "Stella," and such a lack to them fatally mars Goethe's character.^ Whether this lack arose from the constitution of society in Goethe's day, or was an innate defect of his own, we shall leave for others to decide. Yet a faithful chronicler of Goethe's early years may not write, as the English Laureate of his friend, "A passion pure in suowy bloom Through all the years of April blood." 1 Cf. Das Goethe-Jahrbuch, 1884, p. 237, " Goethe in Amerika." GOETHE'S YOUTH. 15 Nor in spite of Goethe's ardent human praise of woman, and the many exquisite feminine portraits wliich he has drawn, do we find that reverential and ethereal adoration in thought and act of which types are not wanting in modern literature and life. While conceding, then, the wide sweep of his sympathies and of his intellectual powers, it must not be consid- ered unjust to Goethe to deny him, hot moral emi- nence, but that moral pre-eminence which is the mark of the finest spiritual organizations. The four years, from 1771 to 1775, between Goe- the's departure from Strassburg and his arrival in Weimar, were filled with varied experiences and . with the most active literary productivity. It was a whirl of journey upon journey, of friendship added to friendship, of love affair and tender attachment. On one side, Schlosser, Merck, Gotter, Kestner, the Stolbergs, Leuchsenring, Lavater, Basedow, Klop- stock, the Jacobis, Knebel, and the Weimar princes ; and' on the other, Lotte, La Eoche and Maximiliane, Fraulein von Klettenberg, Anna Monch, the Countess Stolberg, and Lilli von Schbnemann ; while the restless youth ycleped the Wanderer went roaming through the woody solitudes about his native place ; or visited the courts at Wetzlar to pursue anything but law ; or strayed up and down the Main and Ehine and Lahn, or through the pleasant South-German cities, or into Switzerland and over the St. Gothard ; and again from Frankfort setting out for Italy, but turning back at Heidelberg, and onward at last to Weimar. 16 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. P>^ Equally nomadic, too, his intellectual career. Os- tensibly trained for the legal profession, his studies had spread over a far wider field. His note-books at the University disclose an interest in medicine, chemistry, anatomy, physics, philosophy, and general literature. Nor were music and art neglected. " To regard things carefully, to store them up in memory, to give good heed and let no day pass without col- lecting something, this," writes Goethe from Strass- burg, " is what we now have to do." And again : (^Jurisprudence begins to please me. After all, it is like Merseburg beer, — the first sip, you shudder, but after a week you cannot do without it^J And chem- istry still remains my secret mistress." His first months in Frankfort give him a distaste for the practice of the law, as well as a prejudice against the aristocratic philistinism of the place. He institutes a Shakespeare celebration, and pronounces an ecstatic oration. " The first page which I read in him," he exclaims, " made me his own for all my life, and when I had finished the first piece I stood as one horn blind, to whom a mi- raculous touch has in a moment restored his vision. I recognized, I felt most keenly, that my existence was in- finitely broadened. All was new and unknown to me, and the unaccustomed radiance pained my sight. I doubted not a moment to renounce the regular theatre. Unity of place seemed to me so oppressively confining, unity of action and time burdensome fetters for our im- agination ! — And now that I saw how much the men of GOETHE'S YOUTH. 17 rules in their prison pen had wronged me, my heart would have burst if I had not declared war against them, and daily sought to storm their towers." It was his " Gotz von Berlichingen " wliicli led the assault. No cold and stately hero from classic antiquity, but a valiant mediseval German knight, bluff and honest, fuming and fighting, and dying bravely. Goethe waits for Herder's judgment. "Shake- speare has quite ruined you," exclaims impatiently Herder. "Enough," cries Goethe. "It must be melted down, freed from dross, furnished with nobler material, and be recast. Then shall it appear before you again." It is done, and with the several draughts before us we can watch the work and note the change. At last, a fresh, vigorous drama, or series of spirited dramatic tableaux and staccato dialogue, distin- guished by no unity of design nor historic accuracy, but, with all its ragged edges, a healthful, breezy, patriotic outburst. In 1772 the "Frankfurt Gelehrte Anzeigen," a semiweekly journal, was founded by friends of Goe- the, and created a great sensation. He, as well as Herder, becomes at once a collaborator, and a remark- able series of critical reviews is issued. Pungent, racy, epigrammatic, slashing away at all pretence however dignified, dealing fearless censure and whole- souled praise, — we need no acquaintance with the writings examined to appreciate and enjoy the clear view, the bubbling extravagance, the lusty blows, 2 18 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. the wit, and withal the sound judgment which is displayed. Snatches only can we quote, from the collections of Bernays and of Scherer, for our space forbids longer and perhaps more significant passages. On a work entitled " Letters regarding the most important Truths of Eevelation," he comments : — " These letters are directed principally against the haughty sages of our century who see in God something else than the penal judge of degraded humanity, who believe that the creature of his hand is no monster, that in the sight of God this world is something more than the antechamber of the future state, and who peradven- ture even presume to hope that he will not punish to all eternity. We pass by the attacks upon the foes of reve- lation, which often are blows in the air ; the argumenta- tion regarding the history of mankind at the time of the Redeemer, and the many accumulated proofs of Chris- tianity of which one can no more demand than from a bundle of rods that they should all be of equal strength. But we ask all fanatics on both sides to consider whether it be seemly to maintain in a spirit of persecution that what it is claimed is regarded by God as good or evil on our part is good or evil in his Sight too, or whether that which is refracted in our sight into two colors may not flow back to him in one ray of light. In this we all agree, that man should do that which we all call good, whether his spirit be a muddy pool or a mirror of beautiful nature, whether he has strength to journey along his way, or is sick and needs a crutch. Strength and crutch come from one hand. In that we agree, and that is enough ! " GOETHE'S YOUTH. 19 The following notices illustrate what may be called the summary process : — " Address to his Royal Highness, the Grand-diihe Paul Petrowitsch. Petersburg, 1772. — Alexander used to take a poet along with him, to whom he would give on contract a coin for every good verse and a cuff for every poor one. We trust that this poetic spokesman made other condi- tious for himself, and we admire the patience and vigi- lance of the young Duke, if he heard the address through without falling asleep." " The Brother. By a Lady. 2 vols. — We desire that this brother may remain the only son of his fither ; for the work is beneath criticism." " The Praise of Fashion,, an Address delivered and printed ct la Mode. 1772. . . . And also written ct la mode ; that is, as badly as possible." " Wolf Krage, a Tragedy, hy Johannes Ewald, from the Danish. 1772. — Night, high treason and fratricide, abomination and death, and gloom, horrors, pains of love and pains of dissolution, so that with a devout ' Heaven preserve us ! ' we began to think about going home betimes ! " ^^ Lyric Poems hy Blum. Berlin, 1772. . . . We wish the composer a first-rate girl, days of leisure, and the pure poetic spirit, without the spirit of authorship. The best of poets degenerates when he has the public in mind while composing, and when filled more with a desire for fame, especially newspaper fame, than with his subject." " Enlightened Times ; or a Contemplation of the Pres- ent Condition of the Sciences and Prevailing Customs in 20 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. Germany. Ziillichau, 1772. — A tedious academic discus- sion. The composer, who is probably quite young, at least quite inexperienced, knows the world only from the four faculties, and must have heard somewhere that we live in enlightened times. Now this vexes him, and so he proves that the philosophei's are not enlightened because some still defend the best world ; nor the doctors, be- cause so many men die ; nor the lawyers, because there are so many laws without lawsuits, and lawsuits without laws ; nor the theologians, because they are so obstinate, and because one falls asleep so often when they preach ; nor the humanists, because they do not pursue Latin and Greek with sufficient earnestness, make Hebrew so hard, write so many verses, and the like. Enlightened times ! If the fellow had only written about the man in the moon, or the polar bear ! That was his calling ! Any one who presumes to consider our times enlightened again, must read this whole work as a penalty ; and he who considers them enlightened because he lives in them himself, must leai*n it all by heart." And finally one more extract, from a review of a work entitled, " A Characterization of the most refined European Nationalities. In Two Parts." Leipzig. " Character of refined nations ! Throw the coin into the crucible if you wish to learn its worth. From the stamp you will never find it out to all eternity. What then is the character of a polished nation? What else can it be than the reflection of the religion and the civic constitution in which a nation is set ; drapery, regarding ^ i^^.^; L^ GOETHE'S YOUTH. 21 which the most that one can say is how it may fit the nation. Perchance a philosophic observer might have produced a tolerable characterization. But the composer complacently made the grand tour through England, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and the IS^etherlands, looked into his PufFendorf, talked with fine ladies and gentlemen, and took his book and wrote. Unfortunately there is nothing in all the world more devious than fine ladies and gentlemen, and so his portrayals were also out of focus ; the Englishman he always defends against the Frenchman ; the Frenchman he always contrasts with the Englishman ; the former is simply frivolous, the latter simply strong, the Italian pompous and sedate, the Ger- man guzzling and counting up his ancestors. Everything by hearsay, on the surface, an abstract of ' good society.' "And this he calls a characterization! What differ- ent judgments he would often have passed if he had con- descended to view the man in the midst of his family, the peasant on his farm, the mother among her children, the journeyman in his workshop, the honest burgher by his tankard of beer, and the scholar and merchant in his club or cafe ! But it did not even occur to him that there were any people there ; or if it did occur to him, how was he to have the patience, the time, the conde- scension ] To him all Europe was a fine French drama, or, what amounts to pretty much the same thing, a puppet play ! He peeped in, and peeped out again, and voila tout ! " An important and perhaps somewhat neglected phase of Goethe's earlier years is his attitude in juatters of religion. We sometimes hear him called 22 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. " the great Pagan," a shallow echo of the reaction- ary romanticists and the strict ecclesiastics of sixty or seventy years ago. But the paganism of Goe- the, as Heine cleverly says, is marvellously modern- ized ; and if the middle period of his life betrays a drift toward classic heathendom, his youth, like his old age, bears the stamp of strong religious views, and a faith which in these days would simply be termed liberal. His home training introduced him to cate- chism and dogma, and he was encouraged to report the sermons heard. The New Testament he learned to read in Greek, and the Old Testament in Hebrew. Stealthy hours were devoted to memorizing Klop- stock's "Messias," — a work which evidently inspired one of his earliest efforts, the poem on Christ's de- scent into hell, — and a Biblical epic in prose was partly accomplished. Much in the religious life of his day, and some peculiarities of the official repre- sentatives of the Church, did not appeal to his na- ture, nor did he seem to possess what are called "settled convictions"; but he honored the sacra- ments, and for many years pursued an independent and sober study of the Scriptures. A previous quotation has given the tendency of his thought regarding the truths of revelation. In a criticism of the history of Count Struensee's conver- sion, he remarks further : — " Of the worth of a conversion, God alone may judge ; God alone can know how great the step must be which GOETHE'S YOUTH. 23 the soul has to take here in order yonder to draw near to a communion with him, to the abode of perfection, and to the intercourse and friendship of higher beings. Thousands of open and secret foes of rehgion exist, thou- sands who wouki have loved Christ as their friend if he had been depicted to them as a friend, and not as a sullen tyrant, ever ready to crush with the thunderbolt where the highest perfection is not found." Goethe's youthful standpoint is still more clearly indicated in a short publication, dating from 1771, in the form of a letter from an aged pastor to liis new colleague. Some people, he writes, find no pleasure in beinc: Christians unless all the heathen are to be roasted forever ; but for his part he hurries over that doctrine as over red-hot iron. He has grown old in contemplating tlie ways of the Lord, and finds that God and Love are synonymous. He has no ground for doubting any one's salvation ; it is enough to believe in Divine Love revealed in Christ. Contro- versy he avoids ;' it is easier to hold an eel by the tail than a sophist with reasons ; the divine nature of the Bible cannot be proven if it be not felt; Augsburg and Dordrecht make as little essential dif- ference in the religion of man as France and Ger- many in bis nature ; the confession of faith was a formula necessary in order to establish something, but leaves him his Bible ; if one creed comes nearer the Word of God than another, so much the better for its confessors ; to force opinions upon one is cruel, but to require that one must feel what one cannot 24 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. is tyrannous nonsense. Luther labored to free us from spiritual bondage, yet the Eomish Church has preserved much of divine truth ; suffer it to be, and give it your blessing ! In a word, the essence of Goethe's creed was toleration. It was during this early period that Goethe be- came at least partially familiar with the writings of Spinoza. Herman Grimm ranks the latter witli Homer, Shakespeare, and Eaphael as one of the four great minds wliich had a lasting effect upon Goe- the, regarding them as representatives of Greece and Eome, with all the treasures which those names im- ply and include, and of the Germanic and Hebrew tradition. Goethe acknowledges to Eckermann, in 1831, how well adapted to his own youthful necessi- ties were the views of the great Jewish thinker, in whom he found himself Unable to distinguish be- tween what he brought to Spinoza's "Ethics" and what he took away, it was yet enough for Goethe that he there discovered tliat which calmed his emo- tions, — a grand and open survey of the sensuous and the moral world. But it was the boundless disinter- estedness of the contemplations of Spinoza which specially attracted him, as well as the lesson of re- nunciation, the distinction between knowledge and faith, and the thought of the unity of creation. To these contemplations Goethe repeatedly recurred in later years, and in his old age the " Ethics " was still by his side. GOETHE'S YOUTH. 25 If we seek for traces of pantheistic views in Goethe's writings, we are at first embarrassed by the necessity of defining the term Pantheism itself. Ac- cording to a recent English historian of this sub- ject, (C. E. Plumptre,) Pantheism, in the generally accepted meaning of the word, is the name given to that system of speculation which identifies the uni- verse with God. This explanation presents a good working definition, allowing the author to trace the presence of pantheistic ideas in various philosophic systems from ancient times. But much depends upon the manner of the identification ; and in his summary and conclusion Mr. Plumptre becomes more precise, and describes the form of pantheism which he has been discussing as that which, discarding anthropomorphism on the one hand, and naked ma- terialism on the other, conceives God to be a Power, Eternal, Infinite, disclosing itself alike through every form and phenomenon of nature. It does not iden- tify God with perishable matter ; but rather con- ceives him to be related to matter somewhat as the soul is to the body. More concise is the definition of Dr. Hedge : " God, the creative and ruling power of the universe, distinguished by reason alone from the universe itself." In this sense Goethe, who was the last remove from an atheist, viewing the Finite only as the " living garment " of the Infinite, will be found fully in harmony with the spirit of Tennyson in his profound and beautiful poem styled "The Higher Pantheism." 26 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. A discussion of the many proofs of this view which Goethe's works afford, would carry us far into Goethe's manhood and old age. One illustration only may perhaps be permitted, from the "Proce- mion," in 1816 : — " Was wiir' ein Gott, der nur von aussen stiesse, Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse, Ihm zieint's die Welt im Innem zu bewegen, Natur in sicli, sicli in Natur zu liegen, So dass, was in ihm lebt und webt und ist, Nie seine Kraft, nie seinen Geist vennisst." The ante-Weimar days witness only the beginnings of Goethe's growing interest in Spinoza's ethical and pantheistic theories, and of the irreconcilable con- flict thereby induced between Jacobi and himself ; but we are able to pick out from his letters and reviews of that period, from " Werther," and from those por- tions of "Faust" which evidence an early origin, fragmentary but significant passages which bear wit- ness to this interest. It was his unfinished drama of " Prometheus," indeed, which, containing seeds of Spinozism, incidentally occasioned the famous col- loquy between Lessing and Jacobi upon Spinoza, rousing an extended controversy regarding Lessing's opinions ; — a controversy from which the serious study of Spinoza, and the important philosophic conclusions which proceeded from that study, are considered to date. We have reserved till now any mention of the work which Goethe is said to have rated next to "Faust," — "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers." GOETHE'S YOUTH. 27 Shakespeare has been quoted by Doctor Bartol as describing the phenomenon of sleep-walking in Lady Macbeth better than any modern physiologist; and recently a prominent German professor of psychiatry has gravely analyzed Goethe's work as an accurate pathological study of a diseased mind. Werther in- deed was an illustration, somewhat over-wrought, of his time. He is the super-sensitive soul, whom the rough world only bruises instead of bracing. Dis- appointment in love, combined with a social affront which cripples his ambition, proves too heavy a bur- den, and he turns his back upon the world and seeks in suicide an escape. The weak side of Werther — the unhealthy sentimentality in place of healthy sen- timent — is specially repugnant to the present age, which is schooled to control, if not to conceal, its emo- tions ; and although the pure and powerful fancy, the righteous wrath against social shams, the warm affec- tion for nature, are fascinating traits in the work to this day, no sound mind can peruse the narration without a continuing inward remonstrance and im- patience. This feeling, however, extends not so much to Werther as a creation as to Werther as a character. But it was precisely because Wertherism was then so common a psychological phenomenon that the work gained so enormous a success. The mirror was held up to human nature, and the distorted likeness was at once recognized. The personal expe- riences upon which the story was based are now com- mon property, and it will scarcely be necessary to 28 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. describe in detail the framework of society in which the story is set. The Storm and Stress period forms the background, a period whose leading characteristics indeed are peculiar to no special time or place. In its limited application to the last third of the eigh- teenth century in Germany, the movement which this phrase describes was a general revolt against conventionality and the restraints of oppressive authority, both in society and in letters. Herder and Goethe are the leaders in literature, the for- mer as a pioneer in criticism, the latter as the embodiment of the poetic spirit. Goethe feels the far-reaching, penetrating agitation, and through his soul quiver and thrill the subtle and potent forces which are at work to fashion the coming era. He gathers up the tangled threads of life, and weaves them into a brilliant tapestry of song and tale and drama, which faithfully depict the universal fortunes of mankind. So Goethe required first experience before he might poetically create. But not solely in order to create. He was receptive, ardent, impres- sionable, blending warmth of heart with strength of intellect. To the younger Goethe, as well as to the elder Goethe, sweet human intercourse, encourage- ment, and sympathy were needful. Solitude, save for brief intervals, he could not suffer. He knew little of those heights of loneliness on which the impatient soul of Lessing was so often forced to dwell. For even if his mental outlook was far wider than the glance of most of his associates could comprise, even GOETHE'S YOUTH. 29 if he had often to endure bitter criticism and personal hostilities, his motives and his aims alike misunder- stood, he was also assured of ample appreciation, aid, and applause. Thus he rounds out his first quarter of a century. The principal features of his youthful prime we have here endeavored briefly to sketch, indicating the vari- ous influences which shaped or modified his course, and outlining his multifarious mental activity. We have found him in his youth already a perfect lyric poet; for all that follows, — the luxuriant elegiacs, the fresh and natural ballads, the splendid harmonies of " Gott und Welt," the tender, melancholy yearning of Mignon, the melodious Oriental imageries, the elabo- rate elegies of Marienbad, the numberless variations of the Faust stanza, — is but a differing manifestation of the same spirit ; we find him already penning a warm and vigorous prose, which, pruned and perfected, is to become the standard of modern German ; we find him as the author of "Gotz" already vying with Klopstock in arousing a national sentiment in the German mind by restoring to his countrymen a consciousness of their manly past; as an essayist and reviewer, we find him already laboring to rebuke vain wordiness and false or artificial canons of taste, to unfetter the judg- ment and to awaken a catholic sympathy ; already in "Werther" . " He took the suffering human race, He read each wound, each weakness clear. And struck his finger on the place, And said, Thou ailest here and here." 30 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. And finally his masterpiece of " Faust " is growing under his touch and gaining some of its rarest pas- sages. Thus endowed with this potent promise of his brilliant past, we leave him at Weimar, on the threshold of his long and beneficent career in that his final home. APPENDIX TO "GOETHE'S YOUTH." In order to convey some idea of the peculiarities of Goethe's youthful style, the exact text of the letter from which the extract on page 6 has been translated is here given : — An Joh. Jacob Riese in Frankfurt, Leipzig 20. Oktober 1764. Moigens um 6. Riese, guten Tag ! den 21. Abends um 5. Riese, guten Abend ! Gestevn hatte ich mich kaum liingesetzt um euch eine Stunde zu widmen, Als schnell ein Brief von Horn kam und mich von meinem angefangnen Elate hinweg riss. Heute werde ich auch nicht langer bey euch bleiben. Ich geh in die Coramoedie. "VVir haben sie recht schou hier. Aber dennoch ! Ich binn unschliissig ! Soil ich bey euch bleiben 1 Soil ich in die Commodie gehnl — Ich weiss nicht ! Geschwind ! Ich will wiirfeln. Ja ich habe keiue Wiirfel ! — Ich gehe ! Lebt wohl ! — GOETHE'S YOUTH. 31 Doch halte ! nein ! ich will da bleiben. Morgen kann ich wieder nicht da muss ich ins Colleg, und Besuchen und Abends zu Gaste. Da will ich also jetzt schreiben. Meldet inir was ihr fiir ein Leben lebt? Ob ihr mauch- mahl an mich denkt. Was ihr fiir Professor habt. &, cetera und zwar ein langes & cetera. Ich lebe hier, wie — wie — ich weiss selbst nicht recht wie. Doch so ohngefahr So wie ein Yogel, der auf einera Ast Im schonsten Wald, sich, Freilieit athmend wiegt. Der ungestort die saiifte Luft geniesst. Mit seinen Fitticlien von Baum zu Baum von Bussch zu Bussch sich singend hinzuschwingen. Genug stellt euch ein Vbgelein, auf einem griinen Aestelein in alien seinen Freuden fiir, so leb ich. Heut hab ich angefangen Collegia zu horen. Was fur 1 — 1st es der Miihe wehrt zu fragen 1 Institu- tiones imperiales. Historiam iuris. Pandectas und ein privatissimum iiber die 7 ersten und 7 letzten Titel des Codicis. Denn mehr braucht man nicht, das iibrige vergisst sich doch. Nein gehorsamer Diener ! das lies- sen wir schon unterwege. — Im Ernste ich habe heute zwei CoUegen gehort, die Staatengeschichte bey Professor Bohmer, und bei Ernesti iiber Cicerons Gesprache vom Redner. Nicht wahr das ging an. Die andere Woche geht Collegium philosophicum et mathematicum an. — Gottscheden hab ich noch nicht gesehen. Er hat wieder geheurathet. Eine Jfr. Obristleutnantin. Ihr wisst es doch, Sie ist 19 und er 65 Jahr. Sie ist 4 Schue gross und er 7. Sie ist mager wie ein Haring und er dick wie ein Federsack. — Ich mache hier grosse Figur ! — Aber noch zur Zeit bin ich kein Stutzer. Ich 32 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. werd es auch niclit. — Ich brauche Kunst um fleissig zu sein. In Gesellschaften, Concert, Comoedie, bei Gaste- reyen, Abendessen, Spazierfahrten so viel es nm diese Zeit angeht. Ha ! das geht kostlich. Aber auch kost- lich, kostspielig. Zum Henker das fiihlt mein Beutel. Halt ! rettet ! haltet auf ! Siehst du sie nicht mebr flie- gen ? Da marschierten 2 Louisdor. Helft ! da giug eine. Himmel ! schon wieder ein paar. Groschen die sind hier, wie Kreuzer bei eucli draussen im Reiche. — Aber den- noch kann bier einer sehr woblfeil leben. Die Messe ist herum. Und ich werde recht menageus leben. Da hofFe ich des Jahrs mit 300 Rthr. was sage ich niit 200 Rthr. auszukommen. NB. das nicht mitgerechnet, was schon zum Henker ist. Ich habe kostbaaren Tissch. Merkt einmahl unser Kiichenzettel. Hiiner, Gansse, Truthah- nen, Endten, Rebhiiner, Schnepfen, Feldhiiner, Forellen, Hassen, Wildpret, Hechte, Fasanen, Austern u. s. w. Das erscheinet Taglich. nichts von anderm groben Fleisch ut sunt Rind, Kalber, Hamel u. s. w. das weiss ich nicht mehr wie es schmeckt. Und die Herrlichkeiten nicht teuer, gar nicht teuer. — Ich sehe, dass mein Blat bald voll ist und es stehen noch keine verse darauf, ich habe deren machen woUen. Auf ein andermahl. Sagt Keh- ren dass ich ihm schreiben werde. Ich hore von Horn, dass ihr euch ob absentiam puellarum forma elegantium beklagt. Lasst euch von ihm das Urteil sagen dass ich liber euch fallete. Goethe. In a letter to bis friend Schon born, consul in Algeria, occurs a noteworthy passage in turbulent praise of Herder: — GOETHE'S YOUTH. 33 Frankfurt am 8, Jun. [1774.] Herder hat ein Werk drucken lassen : Aelteste Ur- Jcunde des Menschengeschlechts. Ich hielt meinen Brief inne um Ihnen auch Ihr Theil iibers Meer zu schicken, noch. aber bin ichs nicht im Stande, es ist ein so mystisch weitstrahlsinniges Gauze, eine in der Fiille verschlungener Geaste lebende und rollende Welt, dass weder eine Zeich- nung nach verjUngtem Maasstab einigen Ausdruck der Eiesengestalt nachaffen, oder eine treue Silhouette einzel- ner Theile melodisch sympathetischen Klang in der Seele anschlagen kann. Er ist in die Tiefen seiner Empfindung hinabgestiegen, hat drinn alle die hohe heilige Kraft der simpeln Natur aufgewiihlt und fuhrt sie nun in dammern- dem, wetterleuchtendem hier und da morgenfreundlich lachelnden, Orphischen Gesang vom Aufgang herauf iiber die weite Welt, nachdem er vorher die Lasterbrut der neuern Geister, De- und Atheisten, Philologen, Textver- besserer, Orieutalisten etc. mit Feuer und Schwefel und Fluthsturm ausgetilget ! Appended is a sliort bibliography of works relating to Goethe's youth. General Subject. Der junge Goethe. Seine Briefe und Dichtungen von 1764-1776. Mit einer Einleitung von Michael Bernays. 3 Theile. Leipzig, 1875. Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit. Mit Einleitung und Anmerkungen von G. von Loeper. 4 Theile. Berlin, 1879. 3 34 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. Briefe uud Aufsatze von Goethe aus den Jahren 1766 bis 1786. Zum erstenmal herausgegeben durch A. Scholl. Weimar, 1846. Deutschlauds politische, materielle und sociale Zii- stande im Achtzehnten Jahrhundert. Von Karl Bieder- mann. 2 Bde. Leipzig, 1854-1880. Geschichte der deutschen Literatur im achtzehn- ten Jahrhundert. Von Hermann Hettner. 3 BUcher. Zweite Auflage. Braunschweig, 1872. Goethe. Vorlesungen gehalten an der Kgl. Universifat zu Berlin von Herman Grimm. Zweite durchgesehene Auflage. Berlin, 1880. [Translated by Sarah Holland Adams. Boston : Little, Brown, & Co., 1881.] Goethe's Leben von H. Diintzer. Leipzig, 1880. [Trans- lated by T. W. Lyster. Macmillau, London, 1883, and Estes and Lauriat, Boston.] Goethe in den Jahren 1771 bis 1775. Von Bernhard Eudolf Abeken. Zweite Auflage. Hannover, 1865. Werther und seine Zeit. Zur Goethe-Literatur. Von J. W. AppeU. Neue Ausgabe. Leipzig, 1865. Aus Goethes Frlihzeit. Von Wilhelm Scherer. [Quel- len uud Forschungen xxxiv.] Strassburg, 1879. Goethe's Werther und seine Zeit. Eine psychiatrisch- litterarische Studie von Prof. Dr. Ludwig Wille. Basel, 1877. Herder. Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken darge- stellt von R. Haym. 1. Bd. Berlin, 1877. Herders Lebensbild. Sein chronologisch-geordneter Briefwechsel. Herausgegeben von seinem Sohne. 3 Bde. Erlangen, 1846. GOETHE'S YOUTH. 35 Aus Herders Nachlass. 3 Bde. Frankfurt am Main, 1857-1858. Herder. By Karl Hillebrand. IST. A. Review, July and October, 1872, April, 1873. Vol. CXV. pp. 104-138, 235-287, 389-424. (Eeprinted in part as Monograph IV. Bangor, Me.) Friederilce Brion. Der junge Goethe. (Letters and Poems in Vol. T.) Dichtung und Wahrheit. (Books 10, 11, and 12.) Friederike Brion von Sessenheim. Geschichtliche Mit- theilungen von Phil. Ferd. Lucius, Pfarrer in Sessen- heim. Strassburg, 1877. Friederike Brion von Sesenheim. (1752-1813.) Eine chronologisch bearbeitete Biographic nach neuem Mate- rial aus dem Lenz-Nachlasse. Von P. Th. Falck. Ber- lin, 1884. Deutsche Rundschau, I^ovember, 1878, pp. 218-226 : Wallfahrt nach Sesenheim. Von Heinrich Kruse. Goethe's Youthful Reviews. Der junge Goethe. A^ol. IT. pp. 405-504. Studien iiber Goethe von Professor Wilhelm Scherer in Berlin. Der junge Goethe als Journalist. [In the Deutsche Rundschau, October, 1878, pp. 62-74.] Goethe's Religious Vieivs. "Der junge Goethe" and "Dichtung und Wahrheit," 2yassim. ■ [For the later period, see his works in general. ISTote specially Sarah Austin's " Characteristics of Goethe : from 36 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. the German of Falk, von Miiller, etc.," (3 vols^ London, 1849,) Vol. I. pp. 65-103. Also, " Gesprache mit Goethe m den letzten Jahren seines Lebens. Von J. P. Ecker- mann. Sechste Auflage. (Edited by Diintzer.) In drei Theilen." (Leipzig, 1885.) IL 30, 100-101, 200 ; IIL 253-258. In John's translation, pp. 54-55 (passage suppi§s:s^^by traiislatpr), 411-412, 524-525, 566-570.] Goethe's Stellung^m Christenthnm. Von Julian Schmidt. (In the Goethe-Jahrbuch, IL, 1881, pp. 49- 64.) Der Gang der Kirche in Lebensbildern dargestellt von K. Fr. Aug. Kahnis. Leipzig, 1881. (pp. 410-426: Goethe und das Christenthnm.) Goethes religiose Entwickelung bis zum Jahre 1775. Von E. Fr. A. Jobst. (Programm.) Stettin, 1877. Spinoza and Pantheism. Benedicti de Spinoza Opera quae supersunt omnia. 3 vols, and supplementary vol. (1862). Lipsise, 1843. [Spinoza's Works are translated into English in the Bohn series.] Spinoza's Ethic. Translated by W. H. White. Lon- don, 1883. Spinoza, his Life and Philosophy. By Frederick Pol- lock. London, 1880. Ways of the Spirit, and other Essays. By F. H. Hedge. Boston, 1877. [pp. 252-284 : Pantheism.] General Sketch of the History of Pantheism. By C. E. Plumptre. 2 vols. London, 1881. SchoU, (w. supra,) pp. 193-229. GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 37 II. GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. By JOHN ALBEE. The theory of education at present is to offer an all-embracing outline of studies, from which every talent may select, may specialize itself, and receive its appropriate training. Universal culture, that is, knowing or affecting a variety of intellectual inter- ests, is not now much encouraged, and is seldom mar- ketable. Even the phrases, " a great scholar," " a learned man," have ceased to carry their ancient sig- nificance. And the opponents of classical studies would say it is well it is so ; for the terms meant an acquaintance with Greek and Latin and the contents of libraries merely. Scholar, learned man, do not well describe the modern proficient, their successor, whose claim and place can be exactly defined when one inquires, " What does he know ? " This was sometimes a difficult question to answer in the case of the former class, when one praised them and pro- voked curiosity and inquiry. The answer was as vague and general as the supposed accomplishments. Universal culture we no longer encourage in the indi- vidual ; in the accumulation of studies, in their clear 38 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. demarkations and the demand for thoroughness, there is required a more or less close following of par- ticular lines. Universal culture must now be con- fined in meaning to the possibilities, or opportunities, embraced within the plans and under the teachers everywhere offered, and to their distributed results. The education now most insisted upon is that which qualifies a man to maintain himself by his usefulness to others, — to possess and to be able to apply that knowledge which has its practical value and its equiv- alent money value, like any other commodity. | You may know too little to be wanted anywhere by any- body ; and you may know too much to meet the wants of sagacious employers. , The bounds of knowledge — to sum up what has been said and to make clearer what follows — have been so extended, and the demand for application is so strenuous, that only by devotion to one single de- partment can a man hope for any degree of complete- ness or usefulness. At the same time, this accomplishment in one thing, with its professional or private application, gives to its disciple a limited development which is not in harmony with the highest philosophical or spiritual revelations of the being and aim of man. For man is a unit, a whole, in himself, whatsoever component place he may consent to fill temporarily and with a detached portion of his being. He wishes to know all, grasps at all. He can learn all ; but he can teach, can communicate, only a part. Now aU GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 39 that which cannot be taught, but which every earnest, striving spirit wishes to know and succeeds in know- ing through his own power and will, and in his own way, that is, as his genius guides him, I call self- culture. And inasmuch as I speak of Goethe's self- culture, I am anxious that my definition should be considered, in a peculiar manner, as applicable to him, for it has grown out of a study of his life and activities. I hope it is capable of generalization, and useful to every one who has taken his education, his cultivation, into his own hands ; but it is beyond the scope of this paper to make applications and draw the obvious moral. It is simply the way which one man, already by natural endowment great, found to supplement a usual education, such as was available in his youth, to pass from known and dis- covered ground to original, and to satisfy the impulse of his genius. Nor do I wish to lower or confuse the definition of self-culture, by connecting it in any manner with the history or experience of those com- monly called self-educated men, of whom we have enough and hear enough ; men who struggle up out of the masses, and who are sufficiently honored and wondered at for their striving and their triumph. Self-culture as now to be considered must be held up and measured upon the Goethean plan ; and as the sermon ever and anon comes back to its text and the sons to its refrain, so must we to the definition, which is to be the clue in studying one chief characteristic of Goethe: all that which cannot be taught, but 40 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. which every earnest, striving spirit wishes to know and succeeds in knowing through his own power and will and in his own way, — that is, as his genius guides him, — is self-culture ; and Goethe is the eminent and peculiar example of it, and of its most extraordinary results. It is hard to keep hold of Goethe as a whole, he turns himself in so many different directions. And who is competent to estimate a man who was poet, novelist, art critic, translator, editor, lawyer and coun- cillor of state, dramatist, stage manager and actor, the most voluminous correspondent we know of, — over nine thousand letters known to be now procura- ble, and one half of them already published, — besides his special scientific pursuits in botany, mineralogy, anatomy, and optics ? To some of these departments he added valuable contributions ; in some he made original discoveries, and his literary work has. become already the property of mankind. All the while, as we read his life as known to the persons among whom he moved, his diaries and letters, we are struck with the attention and time bestowed on private and official concerns, which could leave no profitable re- sults, and which would seem to interfere with the concentration requisite for enduring performances. But for the explanation of the amount and quality of his literary legacy, we must study his character- istic literary methods ; and in addition, remember his fortunate circumstances and his long life, pro- ductive to the end. GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 41 It is claimed, and it is a valid claim, that Goe- the's life and work make an epoch in world history. Whether we know it or not, we now see through his eyes when we come to certain points in our studies and experiences. And although unable, and indeed incompetent, as most men are, to follow and appre- ciate the whole range of his contributions, yet any interested and careful reader can feel everywhere the Goethean characteristic in his style and method ; and, more than all, in the comprehensive sweep of his mind, which looks out upon things in a large, infinite way, gathering as it labors on vast materials, ' overflowing in almost every instance the receptacle he had planned for them. He was almost too great and active a man to be a writer ; it is condescension in him to write. After the Frankfort period, he needed urging to prepare anything for print. He was indebted to his friends, and esj)ecially to Schiller, for stimulation in this direction. He loved to accu- mulate, to sketch out plans, to read to friends an incompleted design, and then put it away for more light. Thus all his work seems a means to some other end, — a preparation, — an exploring expedition, returning with abundant results, but how to be finally distributed and arranged, somewhat in doubt; and in fact it is lucky if anything more than a roof is erected over them. Much appears to be unfinished, fragmentary, all sorts of things interjected between the covers of his books ; and this not from want of good structural idea, but either because of some 42 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. difficulty in keeping within its limits, or because he found no conventional literaiy form quite adapted to his peculiar genius. So he overflows in all his longer works ; yet in his shorter is perfectly restrained and unified. It was especially hard for Goethe to bring any of his more important books to end, because his accu- mulations were so large and continuous, and because he filled his writing with his life, which flowed on, and could only be complete by the arrest of life. It must also be remembered that he waited upon his moods, and was not independent of physical aids and hindrances. He used wine and love as stimulants, but not tobacco. He consulted the ba- rometer to know the weather in his brain ; and he knew what seasons, sleep, diet, change, and music could do for the mind. However, there comes a time when we can no more rely upon these charming coadjutors. The problem came to the aged Goethe how to complete works which for the most part had been thrown off in periods when his genius was sus- ceptible to outward influences, responding involun- tarily and warmly. His solution was that by which most men are obliged to labor from beginning to end, namely, to finish what needed finishing by energy and resolution, no longer waiting upon Muse and season. Still we must say that in much of Goethe's work there were additions rather than completions, and it marks a characteristic trait, the cause of which we have already indicated. The Second Part of GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 43 " Faust " is a completion, but not a dramatic comple- tion ; it is a religious reinvestment of the whole con- ception. The Second Part of "Wilhelm Meister" follows vaguely and in a lower atmosj)here the same lines ; nothing is brought to an issue after the manner of ordinary fiction. In Goethe was the extraordinary sense of the progressive character of all that concerns human life ; it appears as merely succession oftenest ; and in either case the highest art must deal with it as without limitations. No end is conceivable to it, but only transitions. Thus while Goethe lived the period could be, and generally was, changed into a semicolon ; whatsoever conclusion, it was provisional ; ceaseless self-culture added chapter after chapter, rewrote, inserted missing leaves, and gave to the god Terminus feet and arms. There should be a dash at the end of most of his writings, to signify that he was interrupted, or was waiting for more light, a new experience, a fresh impulse. This intellectual exuberance was in part the fruit of a habit of self- culture, which accompanied step by step the writings given to the public. The creative power in him seems to have been exactly commensurate with the opportunities of self- culture ; and in the latter we must include, besides various studies, all kinds of personal contacts, expe- riences, and employments. These came forth again as images, characters, or generalizations, in poetry or prose, and tantalize us at once with their likeness and unlikeness to their originals. And it may be 44 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. noticed in passing that he appears to reveal most of the germs out of which grew his literary works. It is true he was a little fond of mystification con- cerning them, and himself, doubtless, as we all do, connected the image created independently in the mind with some material, actual counterpart sub- sequently. This, otherwise, is to give to what we call real existences, facts, or even experiences, too much credit. These have no creative power; the mind, the imagination, create them. We may admit only this : that the relation of Goethe's creations to their originals, or beginnings, is similar to the genesis of life. There is a cell of some sort ; it little resem- bles the final form of independent being, which at any other stage than this is perishable. Goethe was a realist in a certain distinguishing sense ; that is, there must be for him firm realities, but such as were intimately interwoven with his own life. He hated the vague, the subjective, and that which attempted to make something out of nothing. He strove for such a universal expression as could not be literally interpreted, but so flexible as to have in it a manifold adaptation. In some degree, favored by the German intellectual tendency to minute and critical study of masterpieces, he achieved in a short space that which time and chance have given his compeers. Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare, — the pos- sibility of many meanings and many applications. He founded himself upon the internal real ; so that his realism differs greatly from that which among some GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 45 writers is practised and championed in our time. They claim to give us pictures of life as it is, still callino: their work fiction. Nothinjr that does actu- ally, literally exist, is worthy of portraiture. "The spirit of the real is the true ideal " ; and this alone is all that man recognizes and cherishes forever. Tliere is, however, a deeper objection than this to the surface realism of our present literary art. In the moral world, as in the natural, we shall not go far wrong, if we seek for truth and reality in the direct opposite of what appears. The apparent is something adjusted to the measure of the senses. Although Goethe laid strong hold of this apparent, there was for once a man who turned it, not half or quarter, but clear round, and saw the other, the real spirit, or ideal face. He turned the plant clear round, and discovered its secret, the law of its life. And as ever appear- ances are confusing, while the reality is simple and satisfying, so now botany, which, wlien one looks into a text-book or upon a garden of flowers, is the most bewildering of studies, becomes by Goethe's discovery as clear and beautiful as a remembered sin- gle line of perfect poetry. In fact it is poetic ; and it distinguishes nearly all of his scientific investiga- tion that it is resolved into poetry. He is the first modern man who has well succeeded in workincj this transformation ; thus restoring for us the manner of the most ancient natural philosophers, who rendered everything in verse. It seems to have been his 46 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. aim in natural science to satisfy the desire for a productive thought, — one that should be a further means of self-cultivation. His investigations in oste- ology resulted in nearly the same law as in botany, — a simple principle on which the structure of animals and plants is built up alike. What is its value ? Chieilv to the imagination in man. There is no final good in scientific discoveries unless they furnish us something beyond the useful ; this also lias its value, but not the entire. As Goethe himself said, " What- ever is useful is only a part of what is significant." When a simple, pregnant generalization, like Goethe's in botany, is given us, we are not hindered by default of technical knowledge from the highest possible per- ception of the central idea in the plant world. We no more stand before the simplest flower ashamed of our ignorance because we cannot call it by name ; or when we can, satisfied with our knowledge. But there is now freedom for the imagination, and an invitation to reflection. Then truly pansies will be for thoughts ; and the " flower in the crannied wall " will answer, not what God and man is, but as much as it knows about itself. And though some flowers recommend themselves by their beauty or rarity, and others by their commonness, and some even because they are fashionable, all of them, when we are ac- quainted with the law of their inward being, help us to draw nearer to the spiritual symbols and resem- blances which connect each province of nature with every other, and all with man. GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 47 Goethe teaches us after a method, and to a point where we can teach ouVselves. In every direction to which he turned his mind, this is one of his chief merits, that he takes you where you can go alone if you will. This makes him for adults, for poets and writers especially, the most helpful master that has ever lived. . How lie becomes so is easy to see ; it is because he is trying to teach himself; in short, we come again upon his self-culture as the fruit- ful source of his achievements and influence. His studies and investigations were private, unprofes- sional, with no worldly or ulterior aim. What he puts into the mouth of Makaria in " Wilhelm Meis- ter's Travels " expresses his habit very nearly : " We do not want to establish anything, or to produce any outward effect, but only to enlighten ourselves." When therefore Goethe, a man of ample acquire- ments and genius, sits down to study something that he wishes to know, and gives us not only the results, but the steps and the method of his effort, he be- comes a great teacher. Yet we do not wish to follow any master too far ; he is the best who leads us from himself to self- reliance. A man needs many, to whose influence he can surrender himself, and recover himself again and again. In Goethe's self-cultivation it is striking how often he meets with persons and objects, and gives himself up to them until he has learned all they have to impart which can help him, or discovers his own false tendency or position. Then he aban- 48 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. dons them without regret or apology. Witliont re- gret, except the poetic, insjDiriiig regrets of his love affairs, which cannot be omitted from the account of the sources and circumstances of his inward culture. In these there were usually two productive phases or periods ; one while elevated by passion, the other when tormented by remorse. It is said by H. Grimm that Margaret grew out of the latter. But usually he had no time or taste for repenting himself of any- thing that had happened. In his self-complacent way he foresaw compensation, and was not afflicted to know all sides of himself, the weak, tlie strong, the excellent, and the evil. He confessed that his striv- ing to become an artist was a mistake, but added that mistakes also give us insight. This calm, quite superhuman characteristic has prejudiced many good people against Goethe ; tliey think that he sacrificed everybody to his own selfish purposes. The French call love the egoism of two ; but some say Goethe's love was still no more than that of one, — self-love, in short. One of the essential contrasts between Goethe and most literary creators — let us say, for instance, our own Shakespeare — is that Goethe found his mate- rial, his suggestions, his impulse, in his own expe- riences ; while Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and also the greater Greek poets, take what has hap- pened to others as the primary motive of their work. Goethe embodies states of feeling, workings of the intellect ; consequently they have not that chai-ac- GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 49 teristic or historical consistency which is common among other creators. I venture to call their con- sistency ideal ; and I would refer its manifestations more to the personality of Goethe than to that of the characters themselves, which in most works of the imagination are made effective by sliarply drawn limitations. I do not know a character of Goethe's that stands for much more than his mouthpiece ; that one thinks of as a person, as in the creations of many even inferior novelists and dramatists. In truth, one may say, — or perhaps here it is better to inquire whether nearly all the most famous char- acters of poets and dramatists have not something vague and impersonal about them ; while it is left to the inferior to come before us with their impressive, although very limited personality. The great are great without being peculiar, and indeed by contrasts to it ; they fill a great place, symbolize the total conception, and must be drawn with a few and the' simplest lines ; while about them move all manner of subordinates, of narrower yet more striking idio- syncrasies. It is these latter we make ourselves free with ; they pass into proverb, yes, into language, and have the honor to become nouns and adjectives. Goethe wrote in the modern temple, where all the Muses were real women. He transformed them back to their ancient estate. This his temple was of glass, so that the transformation could be seen, the original clay be detected after it was winged. Doubtless other poets, liis predecessors and compeers, also drew 50 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. mucli out of their own lives, fashioning their crea- tions out of real, present images ; but it is concealed from us by our meagre information concerning their personal history and character. In Goethe's case all is open, all is revealed, by his own disclosures and innumerable testimonies. We know the avidity of the public concerning everything which connects personal affairs with a poem or story, — its liability to mistake, and its haste to censure ; and as the world is full of literalists, as well as of those who conceive of all as if existing in the present and among them- selves, forgetful that every age " determines and fash- ions both the willing and unwilling," they hear of Goethe's relations to his time, to its persons, ideas on religion and politics, with some scruples of con- science ; their most serious charge being that he immolated, and then dissected, living, loving human beings for the purposes of literary art. It should be remembered that, so far as Goethe's own confessions are summoned against him, they cannot be fully ad- mitted ; for he did not confess himself in print until the matter which entered into it had become poetry in its first stage. He used it over and over, and gave it endless additions and transformations. In truth, the literal experience, the actual fact, do not exist for a moment, or but just a moment, in his mind. In his first attempt at verse, when he was in love with Gretchen, he says he first " mystified himself." You cannot detect him writing anywhere except sym- GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 51 bolically. Thus, in working the chief miracle given man to perform in his earthly life, the changing the water which he draws out of the common reser- voirs into the wine of song and story, Goethe had a wonderful, almost supernatural power. In tracing back this gift, it becomes clear that it grew out of bis genius for self-culture. We can observe that it had a twofold or reciprocal character, not uncommon to all men, but in the highest degree to him ; namely, being taught by his own faculties, unconsciously at first, and then in return consciously and earnestly teaching them. It may be said, that when a man arrives at the latter stage, he is free ; he, by the same means, liberates others; he becomes a self-deter- mined being, and can wholly exterminate what is obstructive in himself, and perfect what is productive and best. This consciousness becomes distinct grad- ually ; and the interesting point in Goethe's intellect- ual history is to observe its development. But now what shall we say on behaK of those lovely, and, as some think, wronged ladies, sacrificed to make the images of Gretchen, OttiUe, Iphigenia, Sulieka, who now seem to have an independent being ? Were Friederika, Lottie Buff, Lillie Schone- man. Von Stein, and the others, but the rough stone in which sleeps the statue ? or did they breathe, suffer, feel the chisel and polisher of the artist ? And which endured most, they or Goethe himself ? It is permitted to women to heal themselves by sensible attachments and marriage, which all seem to have 52 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. done, with one exception ; while he poetized his woes. It is too much to expect of every man that he shall commit suicide to show that he was in earnest in love. Yet I know of no other course that would thoroughly satisfy the world of Goethe's sincerity and unhappiness. Must we, however, exercise our- selves in passing some kind of judgment in the business ? For this present, all such controversies must be renounced ; and once for all let us summa- rize the sujDposed defects of Goethe's nature, which, as comprehensive and yet condensed as we can make them, are religious, domestic, and political. In conclusion of this element in Goethe's manner of self-culture, that is, the embodiment in imaginary forms and relations of not only actual people and events, but as well his various internal moods, reflec- tions, and tendencies, I will add, that it grew into a habit with him to want to know, first of all, in regard to the productions of other writers, and even scientific labors, out of what kind of personal character and experience they had been evoked. In this, as critic and student, is to be observed his leaning toward the historical and objective method. One might sup- pose, after all that has been divulged respecting his own way of drawing from his experience and circum- stances, that it might properly be called the sub- jective method, and that he would use approvingly, in describing others, the same term. I shall not insist on the distinctions in the use of these terms by Goethe which I have endeavored to find ; but I Niv; P^.ro"^*^53 GOETHE'S SELF-CUL have made the attempt in order to read his critical works especially, and maxims scattered all through his other writino^s, with better understanding In tlie first place, then, there are two essentials to all intellectual efforts and products. These two essen- tials may be called by several terms ; as, broadly, nature and art ; or, specifically, reality and imagi- nation, truth and symbol, yourself and the world. These cannot be separated ; the objective method does not separate them ; but the subjective metliod undertakes to exclude, sometimes one, sometimes the other. To this must be added that he often em- ployed the term subjective in speaking of egotists, mannerists, and dilettauts. The terms dilcttant and dilettanteis7n grew up alongside of this enlargement of the meaning of art and artist, and were the necessary negative or anti- thetical expressions. The looser meaning of dilet- tant is one wdio amuses himself, or cultivates not too seriously any art, or science, or literature, and does not pretend to success or excellence. He is judged in proportion to his intention, and we give our ap- plause graciously, because it is not demanded of our head, but our heart, in return for a casual pleasure, or because there has been displayed to us some unexpected natural, though untrained talent. But if the effort be serious, yet a failure ; if it make a demand to which we do not, cannot yield, then, in the usage of Goethe, Schiller, and their friends, the effort is dilettanteism, and the agent is a 54 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. dilettant. In short, when one undertakes to gain tlie height, as Goethe said, through admiration of it, but not the steps to it ; or feels himself from any impulse, inward or outward, disposed to something for which he has, perhaps, a little, but no effective talent ; there is the delineation of numberless indi- viduals who pretend much, who even labor industri- ously, yet with no praiseworthy results. However, we must not apply these significant words empiri- cally, or too harshly. We have had many single gifts, precious and enduring, from men of this class; and we cannot forget the contributions of many imtrained observers of nature. It is inevitable that Goethe must believe in recov- ery after never so many false steps and tendencies. Being men out of the earth, going through the world for a brief period, looking forward constantly, and in the crises of life upward, it is necessary we sliould make our mistakes help us. In the " Annals " of Goethe, which are a sort of epitome and continuation of the " Autobiography," he declares that he meant in " Wilhelm Meister " to delineate the career of a dilet- tant, whose "false steps may at last conduct to an invaluable good." One word more of his manner of coming to conclu- sions respecting the work of other minds. We have recently here, in last year's study of Emerson, been led through various special points of view to one agreeing opinion, — that character was the source of his activi- ties, and that it is reflected in them with few reser- GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 65 vations and no pretensions. Always, when we can find no clue to the private life of the great men of the past, we attempt to construct it out of their times, their contemporaries, and the whole personal environ- ment, as far as we can reproduce it. It was this objective spirit in Goethe that made him wish to come into the closest relations with all that interested him, — men, women, and nature. If there was known to him good fruit anywhere, he was not satisfied with eating, but wished also to see the tree that bore it, — its root, its climate, and the soil out of which it had grown. In this way a book became to him some- tliing more than a dry fagot of sticks from the still living tree ; it became an expression of life, and con- tributed something to his own living and reflecting nature. Thus he absorbed the large circle of extraor- dinary persons whom at first he took pains to know, and who at length took equal pains to make them- selves known to him, and to communicate whatever they were able. His own account of what we here but hint at must be given, that it may become more clear to the reader: — " From the standpoint where God and nature had been pleased to place me, and where, next, I did not neglect to exert my faculties according to my circumstances, I looked all about me to mark where great tendencies were in operation and lastingly prevailed. I, for my part, by study, by performances of my own, by collections and experiments, endeavored to reach forth towards those tendencies, and, faithfully toiling upwards, to the level of 56 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. the achievements I could not myself have accomplished ; in all simplicity, innocent of all feeling of rivalry or envy, •with perfectly fresh and vital sense, I pi-esumed to appro- priate to myself what was offered to the century by its best minds. My way, therefore, ran parallel with very many beautiful undertakings, till it would next turn towards others. The new accordingly was never foreign to me, nor was I ever in danger either of adopting it in a state of unpreparedness, or, by reason of old-fashioned prejudice, rejecting it." On such a text as this confession offers, one might gather together all the articles and story of his self- cultivation. On one point we must here add some- thing, so that we may keep in «iind that results were never wanting to complete the full measure of this absorbent genius, to show that the productive kept an equal pace with the receptive effort. The stream of influences flowing to Goethe received in their passage the most earnest inspection ; he took up all that were allied in any manner with his nature, and bodied them forth again in suitable forms, enlianced by art and the fulness of a thus multiplied life. Often he personified a tendency or feeling. This design, which belongs more strictly to confessed allegory, ends in Goethe rather tamely, so far as we look for character- drawing. The symbolical man has a too diversified nature, as well as field of action. I say man, for it is the men in his books that generally fail to live in our memory as independent beings. It is quite different with his women ; they are simple or sensuous ; some GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 57 have the elusive feminine charm wliich no poet before has known how to depict so well; some are the women of men's imagination, who all in his writings turned out so well ; others are downright saints, whose spiritual introspections are graphically portrayed. To all these representative types he gave such human forms as well satisfy our love of the beautiful, within artistic limits. Let us listen to his own opinion of his women characters for a moment, in order to mark the difference between his creative method and that of the writers who draw from the life, and beg of us to be pleased to recognize our acquaintance in their gilded frames : — "My idea of women is not abstracted from the phe- nomena of actual life, but has been born within me, God knows how. The female characters which I have drawn have therefore all turned out well ; they are all better than could be found in reality." Mark here the logic of the ideal method, — " there- fore all turned out well." Of his men it may be said that they are all also parts of himself, but from a very different realm than his women. In them there is more objective treatment, and yet they are not so distinct. But in all and each may be seen how well he had resolved all his materials into his own life before reproduction. Man is an imitative animal, is the received axiom and basis of all art. This unconscious impulse ac- companies, nay, is commonly the means of setting free, of delimiting, what is nature's particular gift to 58 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. each man. Too often, we are aware, it is the finished production, the feeling raised in us by it, that we would at once imitate. The deep -seeing Goethe very early found that not this was the true path of self- cultivation, and a substantial, abiding fountain of literary activity ; but that it might be attained with fortunate circumstances, by study of all previous conditions, and the life and art out of which great masters and their work had sprung, and upon which they had impressed themselves in return. So from early life he began to grasp and to imitate, not the finished works themselves, which would have re- sulted only in something less than his models and ended in disgust, but the foundations and elementary conditions of a rich, self-developing, and continuous mental activity. This was why he was so recep- tive; and being so became many-sided without the usual fatality of accomplishing nothing to justify the name. He was, in truth, both actively and passively many-sided. But now it should be noted with what certainty he drew back from influences and studies when they threatened to absorb and restrict him. It seems as though he looked upon them all as but preparatory ; a means of cultivation, not an end in themselves. And his peculiar genius led him on to know many things up to a certain limit, rather than the one which always flatters the specialist that it is with- out limit, because it has obtained possession of him rather more than he has of it. What was this limit GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 59 which Goethe observed ? Spinoza had shown him the boundary of investigation in respect to divine things ; which, it has been often said, had a power- ful and soothing influence upon his reflections. Whether it was that early impress, or a native ten- dency, the limit of the surrender of his mind and interest was reached when the method, the lioio, of nature had been reached, and when the next step would involve a recourse to metaphysics to resolve the wherefore. In a similar manner, in all which he denominated Art he stopped short at the vague, the inexpressible, and the subjective. Even the romantic he thought no adequate expression, because it confused the moral and artistic sense. He must work where there was reality, freedom, such as the Greek outline denotes ; and upon that which was not already a shadowy and uncertain symbol, but so universal and inevitable that it could be symbolized in a thousand pleasing and instructive ways. Many a time he abandons himself to a mood ; seldom to the formal choice of poetic theme ; and he believes that the occasional poem, the fruit of the former, is our best modern poetry, while the latter labors in a vacuum. He yields to personal influences, intellectual and passion- ate, until they become noxious and are likely to sub- merge his individuality. And he follows the study of natural sciences as far as the human senses, un- aided by microscope, scalpel, laboratory, and prism, can penetrate. Artificial contrivances introduce arti- 60 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. ficial relations. But the chief objection, from the standpoint of Goethe's self-culture (which would co- ordinate the visible world with man), to the techni- cal and mechanical methods of investigation, is again this, to which I have already alluded; namely, that in science and in philosophy we should not attempt to search the inaccessible, the great mystery, but keep ourselves on the hither side, wliere we can labor fearlessly and to some purpose. This, one may well say, is a poet's doctrine ; since it gives up one world to his sharpest outward senses, and consecrates the other to the imagination. In Germany more than anywhere else, in Goethe's time, such a belief ap- peared as the natural reaction from the innumerable attempts of philosophers and theologians to formulate systems which should explain by ratiocination what, having been long accepted by faith, was beginning to be shaken by those inquiries that we now stand in the full stream of. A great deal in " Faust " has a symbolic or ironical reference to the current dis- cussions. These discussions were bold and vehe- ment, and went so near the verge of profanity that a man of Goethe's sense of proportion reacted against them. Fichte's conclusion of one of his lectures, whether true or false, hits off the height of the fash- ion of philosophical agitation : " To-morrow, gentle- men, I shall create God." I have said that Goethe disliked all mechanical contrivances for extending the reach of the five hu- man senses. It is well known how much he inter- GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 61 ested himself iu the theory of colors. He came in the course of his investigations more near to beiug moved off his usual calm balance than by any other affair of his life. His theory was not accepted, and still is not, save by a few men. Yet who would know Goethe must know it ; for even in its supposed errors is more clearly shown than in his accepted scientific observations the longiug for, the immense faith in, the unity of Nature and the simplicity of her operations. In optics, as in other pursuits, he would have no aids but the natural eye ; and his cliief dis- trust in Newton's theory of colors came from that philosopher's use of the prism in experiments. There is here a curious coincidence in sentiment between Goethe and Keats, which seems to reveal the poetic temperament the same iu two otherwise infinitely different natures. One day, at a merry meeting of poets and artists in London, Keats proposed the toast, " Confusion to the memory of Newton." Charles Lamb refused to drink until it had been explained. " Because," said Keats, " he destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to a prism." Nature, as if to reward the poet who would toler- ate no mediatory artifices for access to her mysteries, endowed him with a natural second-sight. Still he must deliver what he saw by symbol. Thus were both nature and art satisfied. The unity of Nature was an early vision, and the last supreme certainty of his old age. This, being 62 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. well established in him, became an active, efficient idea. The apparent manifold parts and diverse man- ifestations of Nature being but adaptations of her- self to external mutual conditions, every one was the symbol of the other ; and the typical form was that which self-culture and art should bend themselves to produce. We left behind one Goethean characteristic, of which some mention should be made. This was his special studies as a means of self-culture, rather than for the purpose of becoming a specialist. Just as he released himself from personal influences wdien he found them like to be overpowering or barren, so in studies he stopped at the point where it would be necessary for going on with one to give up all the others. Had his inclination been other, he would have become a learned professor, or a great author- ity in minerals, anatomy, and botany ; or a poet and only a poet. But he never could lose himself in anything. Perhaps one of the reasons of this, besides the motive of self-culture, was, that though a poet and much else, he was also a critic. Indeed, the chief limitation of Goethe's temperament is, that reflection interferes too much and too often with spontaneity. As he grew older, he became more and more di- dactic and Orphic. The early fruitage and flowers had been plucked ; he now began to harvest the seed-corn. There is something in the oracular wis- dom of his maturity which resembles the poetic efi'ect, but we miss the morning-red. The daemonic GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 63 influences of his youth are in abeyance ; they are in his cabinets now, strung upon wires. They are moved at length by determination and energy, and help him to complete his untinislied works, where they reappear disembodied and passionless. The apotheosis of that which had lived in him, all glow- ing, sensitive, creative, took place. Although much given- to symbolizing throughout all periods of his life, and to a reliance upon moods and circumstances, as well as a secret leaning toward poetic superstitions, presentiments and omens, in general he held firmly to realities, and insisted that divining-rods could only be found on the tree of knowledge. As the closing result of these two tendencies he became in prose didactic ; and in poetry, there being for him not much else left to undertake, he attempts to reveil symbols in a deeper mystery. In this he still adhered to his life-long habit of leaving one world to action and reflection, the other to invention and imagination. In the former, his treatment and subjects are various and suggestive ; in the latter, there are plentiful master- pieces, ample invitations to study. We can make personal applications here and there. Yes, it is plain that Goethe foresaw the needs of this genera- tion, and left some sealed, almost personal messages. These are, I dare say, such as most would vouch Goethe never intended. But a reader who finds no more in any book than the writer intended is a poor reader, or he is reading a poor book. A good book 64 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. is the author plus the reader. I say this by way of preparation for the inevitable questionings which must arise in the coming week as to whether Goethe intended all that we shall hear from our speakers in their interpretations. We shall hear profitably what each one finds in which we can all agree. For the rest, the unconscious element, that is in every great work of man's mind, it lies before us like a friendly, rich banquet, where tliere is enougli for all and somethiug for every taste. This utfcouscious ele- ment is no doubt an extensive portion of Goethe, and especially fascinating as it appears in every sort of figurative form. Never believe that in Goethe you are getting your truth without poetry. The naked truth is verily naked, and had better remain in the bottom of its traditional well. Give to it its relations, its adaptations, put it into action and thought, and as it is a liberating, divine thing, it clothes itself in joyful, beautiful forms, and becomes poetry. The higher the truth, the more poetic; and all men prefer illumination, the opening of the in- tellectual and spiritual sense, to any other light. For it takes them out of their limitations, which higher truth challenges as facts. These a low, earth-dwelling understanding has erected into in- stitutions, social, religious, political, which our study of Goethe may expose and help us to resist. The sacred treasure, the accumulation of a long life of activity, upon which Goethe turned constantly reflection and imagination in due proportions and GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 65 with an infallible discrimination, has been handed on to us in various vessels; some translucent, always visible ; some to be seen only in the night, like the castle of Avallon, by the light of certain stars, reck- oned lucky in the horoscope of the beholder, under which his vision is clearer in some seasons and epochs of life than at others. To speak without metaphor, if we live, experience, suffer, love, and think, we come in succession to pages of Goethe where, having once been dark, we now find he has left a lamp burning for us ; like a friendly host, who divined better than ourselves the hour of our arrival. As we have said, the unity of nature was Goethe's constant perception ; every seeming diversity but adaptation, in whose processes are all the semblances of motive, cunning contrivance, sympathy, sex, moth- erly forethought, as in the cotyledonous leaf, love of beauty and final purpose. It appears to me he took a lesson here ; yielding himself, like a plant, to the external conditions of man's world. But then he reversed the operation, and made all conform to an inward sliaping mind. Herein we come to that which distinguishes man from plants and animals, and also, it must be said, man from man ; one liv- ing wholly in the external, and forever guided and moulded by it ; another receiving it, but reacting upon it, and impressing his own inward being in typical forms that draw us from the fashion that passeth away to the permanent and true. 6 66 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. Self-culture, therefore, by means of the external surrender and the internal shaping, is a good part of the philosophy and religion of Goethe. To sepa- rate them is a sin in literary ethics, and is to want the philosophical substructure of all creative liter- ary art. It was in delineating these two aspects of man's nature and destiny, morally considered, that he found man's greatest good and worst evil. Meister blun- ders, Faust sins, in the endeavor to satisfy themselves with the external world, — to conquer, to possess it. All along they are not sinners, but exceedingly desir- ous of wisdom by means of self-cultivation ; but they have taken wrong roads. This, then, their bungling was their error. And as in Faust we have a new sort of devil, so in Meister we have a new kind of sinner ; both much needed to instruct and convict the modern world, hotly in pursuit of every means, cul- ture included, to possess itself of external advantages, to live more splendidly on the surface, to feel, like the fly on the wheel, that they cause all the move- ment and the dust. Our age had outgrown the inter- pretations of the good parish priest ; Satan did not embody for us any wickedness with which we were practically acquainted, and most vulgar sins were provided for by the law. We needed a more subtle, refined, and familiar devil to affright us, and a cor- rected catalogue of those errors in which we were involved, scarcely however knowing it, because long • without prophets. Goethe came, and having first GOETHE'S SELF-CULTURE. 67 taught and saved himself, in a manner demanded by modern life, he then left us the method and the useful precepts. When we use the words sin and devil, the implica- tion is too often of some outward act or some incar- nation of it ; when we find it in French, we suspect a woman not far off. In Goethe it is a little nearer ; it has many marks, many metonymic names ; but false tendencies and vague, and impatience, negation, ego- tism are some of them. The great human effort and act is renunciation ; the final issue, reconciliation. For these self-culture in its broadest meaning is the instrument and preparation, and its purpose justifies its means. Whenever the nations of the North, and especially the Teutonic, have reached certain stages in civiliza- tion, they have been bowed down under the feeling that there was something wrong in the universe, which it was their mission to set right. Goethe was born into a chaotic time, when this feeling was at its height throughout Europe. He was endowed by nature with a higlily organized being, susceptible to every impression, to such a degree that he cherished superstitions in regard to it. As great care is taken that those who can suffer shall, he felt to the full the maladies of his age. He wrought his own cure first, by self-culture, there being no outward helps ; then he turned to the relief of others, and became the great intellectual and spiritual physician of man- kind. 68 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. III. GOETHE'S TITANISM. By THOMAS DAVIDSON. Two things become clear to men as they advance in spiritual life : first, that there is no rest for the soul anywhere save in the Absolute and Infinite ; and, second, that this rest can be attained only by the per- sistent and heroic efforts of the soul itself. Althou2;h the facts corresponding to these truths are eternal, although the life of the soul, unconscious as well as conscious, is a striving toward the Absolute and Infi- nite through infinite evolution, the truths themselves come but slowly and late into consciousness, and the former comes much earlier than the latter. Indeed, the former has been impressed by all the great world- religions, as well as by some of the great world-phi- losophies, whereas the latter is in many quarters, even of the civilized world, counted little less than blasphemy. Looking merely at the Western world, we find that, in the religion of ancient Greece, the greatest impiety of which a man could be guilty was v/3pL<;, or insubordination ; that is, any intent or en- deavor to place himself on an equality with the gods. This we find forcibly illustrated, not only in the , GOETHE'S TITANISM. 69 myths regarding the Titans, but also in those related of Tantalus, Ixion, Niobe, etc. To the Greeks, as to the Hebrews, the divine powers are jealous, standing upon their rights and claiming unquestioning obe- dience, after the manner of Oriental despots. The heaven, as Aristotle hints, is always a copy of the earth, and men's gods are never very much better than themselves. No doubt, both in Greece and in Judeea, there were men who had a nobler and truer conception of the Divine Power, and this conception finally attained currency in that powerful movement called, after its chief promoter, Christianity. Jesus, " being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God ; " or, as the revised version has it, " being in the form of God, counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God." More clearly expressed, this means that Jesus, though essentially deiform, held that equality with God was not a thing to be obtained by robbery. It was a great step for men to have come to recog- nize that they were deiform, and still a greater step to have realized that that form could be actualized, and that they might be perfect, even as the Father which is in heaven is perfect. This view is by no means peculiar to Christianity. We find it repeat- edly stated by heathen philosophers in the clearest terms. Hierokles, the Pythagorean, for example, tells us that " each ought to become, first a man, and then a god." It is true that the Hellenic view, having its root in polytheism, is not identical with the Christian 70 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. view, whicli is founded in monotheism ; but the two agree in this important respect, that they recognize the end of spiritual life to be the attainment of the Abso- lute. The most fundamental difference between the two views is this : that, while the philosophic Greeks held the way to the Absolute to be through the exer- cise of the speculative or theoretic virtues, the Chris- tian Fathers placed it in the practical virtues, which the Greeks held to be merely the conditions of arriv- ing at manhood. In later Christianity, which is quite as much Hellenic as Hebrew, the two views were united. The motto of the greatest of all the monastic orders, the Benedictine, which, roughly speaking, was founded in the year 500, is, Om et labora, " Pray and labor," — in other words, combine the practical with the contemplative life. As lias recently been pointed out in an admirable way by the Bishop of Foggia, St. Benedict combined in himself the practical wisdom of the Eonian (he was the son of a Eoman patrician) and the contemplative spirit of the Christian monk. But, besides the above-mentioned difference be- tween the Hellenic and Hebrew views, there was another, hardly less pregnant in its effects. In the Hellenic view, man was destined to attain divinity, if at all, through his own efforts, through self-purifi- cation and devotion to that contemplation which, as Aristotle says, "we sometimes enjoy, God always." In the Hebrew view, on the contrary, man was to be raised to perfection equal to that of the Father, in large measure by grace, tliat is, by a free transient GOETHE'S TITANISM. 71 act on the part of the Divine itself. The doctrine of special grace is an ahiding portion of the Christian creed. Christians, therefore, following the example of Jesus, were expected to empty themselves and wait till God filled them and exalted them, while the Greeks were expected in all ways to strive and help themselves. As a natural consequence, the charac- teristic Christian virtue is Oriental self-abasement or humility, whereas the characteristic Hellenic virtue is self-respect or personal dignity. While the Chris- tian claims nothing for himself, hut looks for every- thing as a free gift from God, powerful and pitiful, against whom he has no rights, the Greek, conscious of his own potential divinity, makes infinite claims, and labors in every way to make these good. The success of Christianity and the downfall of Hellenism mean that the world accepted the Chris- tian view and rejected the Hellenic. It has done this in large measure, at least in theory, for some eighteen hundred years. Still not altogether even in theory, and very imperfectly in practice. Though the Hel- lenic spirit slumbers, it does not die. " The vine-wreathed god, Eising, a stifled question from the silence, Fronts the pierced Image, with the crown of thorns." At no time has this spirit been entirely inactive; but its mightiest revolt took place in the sixteenth century, in what is known as the Pagan Eenaissance, which again was closely connected with the Protes- tant Eeformation. In the former there is an asser- 72 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. tion of the rights of the natural, as over against the spiritual ; iu the latter, an assertion of the rights of human reason, as over against faith ; in both, a revolt against the spirit of historical Christianity. In the last three hundred years, Hellenism has been making rapid strides. Freedom is the order of the day, just as submission was in former times, and there can be but little doubt that this tendency will go on increasing. And it is right and well that this should be so. In spite of all its great worthiness, in spite of its unexampled success, in spite of its manifold adapta- tion to human weaknesses and needs, the Christian ideal is not a perfect one. It is essentially one- sided, and needs to be supplemented by the Hellenic ideal, which contains elements both of manliness and truth which the Christian ideal lacks. It is in every way more manly for the deiforra human being to work out his own perfection by his own free efforts, than to place himself in the position of a dependent mendicant and accept it from another. Moreover, such perfection, even if desirable, is not possible ; for perfection is not something that can be imparted or received ; it is something that must be worked out through a long series of free acts, and these no being, not even a god, can perform for another. That the Christian Fathers should have adopted a view at variance with this, only shows that they understood the nature of spirit and of spiritual things much less perfectly than the contemporary GOETHE'S TITANISM. 7B Pagan philosophers. This difference becomes very- apparent, when we compare the Christian concep- tion of God with the Liter Hellenic philosophical one. The Christian conception is still mythological to a considerable extent. According to this, God is still only a large man, with all the finite attributes and passions of man, an individual among individuals, a being who loves and hates, plans and repents. The Greek conception, on the other hand, is profound and philosophical. According to this, God is above all individuality, being its essential correlate and condi- tion. None of the attributes of individuality apply to him. He is neither one nor many, although he is the essential condition of both. He performs no tran- sient acts, inasmuch as time does not exist for him. He is nowhere, and yet everywhere, because space does not exist for him. He is without variation. In a word, he is ; he is that which is. He is not a reality, since all reality is of necessity finite and capable of performing transient acts iu time and space. That is what we mean by reality. He is the pure Ideal, of which the attributes are Absoluteness and Infinity. In the material world he appears as space, the prime condition of all corporeal existence ; in the intellectual world he objectifies himself as be- ing, the condition of all thought ; in tlie moral world he diffuses himself as pure love, or as the good, the condition of all morality, heroism, and self-sacrifice. The sensible manifestation of God was recognized by the early Aryans, when they made Dyaus, that is 74 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. Zeus or Jupiter, their chief god ; for Dyaus is merely the open sky, which these early thinkers confounded with pure space. The intellectual objectification of God as Being we find first in the Vedas and in the Mosaic records. In the former we read : " He who established the six worlds, — is he that One which exists in the form of unborn Being ? " In the latter, God is made to speak of himself as / am that I am, or as / am that am. It is not until after the rise of Christianity that we find the clear statement made that God is Love ; but centuries before that, as early at least as Aristotle, we find what is virtually the same thing, the affirmation that God is the highest good, that is, the object of the highest love. We thus find that all the three modes in which the Divine Being reveals itself — the real, the ideal, and the moral — have successively and at long in- tervals of time been discovered, and even stated with almost philosophical precision. Unfortunately, this philosophic statement has never attained currency, but has always been reduced to terms of the imagi- nation. The Infinite has been made finite ; the Absolute, relative ; the Ideal, real ; the Eternal, transient. Dyaus became Jupiter; / am that am, Jehovah ; Love, the angry divinity of Christianity. The truth is, the philosophic conception of the Spir- itual and the Divine cannot be made intelligible to the popular mind, which thinks almost entirely in terms of the imagination. Since, however, even the popular mind craves, and, for moral reasons, GOETHE'S TITANISM. 75 requires, some notions of divinity, an attempt is made to accommodate the philosophic conception of it to the imagination. These fanciful conceptions of the Deity after a time recoil from the people upon philosophers themselves, and turn these into theolo- gians, who employ all their efforts in order to make the popular notions of divinity acceptable to pure reason or thought. This is the real source of all that is mythic in religion, as well as of all that is purely dogmatic. It is, consequently, the source of all those systems of religious thought which arise from time to time and become popular in the world ; for example. Buddhism, Christianity, Mohamme- danism. Such systems, though essentially unphilo- sophical, and necessarily containing much that is erroneous, are in many ways of very great value. Indeed, it may be said that practically they are of more value than the pure truth would be. The error contained in them is like the nitrogen in the atmos- phere, which prevents the oxygen from destroying the human frame by too rapid combustion. But, after all, no religious system whose god or gods are to any degree conceived in terms of the limiting imagination can be perpetual. The error involved will, sooner or later, make itself felt, in thought by contradiction, and in life by disorganization, and then will follow something in the form of a revolt, both in thought and life. The revolt in thought will come from philosophers. — not necessarily from pro- pounders of systems, but from men intimately ac- 76 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. quainted with the aspirations and intellectual needs of their time, probably from poets or literary men. The revolt in life will come either from men who have suffered deeply from the institutions among which they were born, like Eousseau, or from men in whom the "enthusiasm of humanity" is an over- powering passion, like the inspired founders of the great religions. It is this revolt against established conceptions of the divine and the institutions founded thereon that we call Tita7iism. But, inasmuch as new conceptions of God are practically new gods, Titanism always seems a revolt against God himself, a violence, an impiety, whereas it frequently turns out to be the very opposite. When such a revolt is crushed, the revolters are spoken of as atheists and traitors ; when it succeeds, they may be counted as prophets and religious heroes. As John Harrington puts it, " Treason doth never prosper : what 's the reason ? For when it prospers, none dare call it treason." All revolts against the established order of things are due to one form or another of radicalism, — some attempt to secure a more perfect expression of the fundamental being or nature of things. This is just as true of those great religious reformations that have ended in giving to mankind a nobler and truer con- ception of the divine, and in bringing this conception to bear upon human life, as of those wild revolu- tions that seek to overturn law and order in favor of anarchy and license. There are, indeed, two entirely GOETHE'S TITANISM. 11 distinct forms of Titanism, just as there were two orders among the mythical Titans themselves. The Titans are simply personifications of the brute forces of nature and the fundamental forces of spirit. The former of these always tend to revolution and an- archy ; the latter, even in their revolt against order, to a hiuher order. The former in man we call the lusts of the flesh ; the latter we call the aspirations of the spirit after the Divine, the Infinite, the Abso- lute. Aristotle {De Anima, B. IV. 2 ; 415^ 1) says that "all thinos reach out toward the eternal and the divine, and it is for the sake thereof that they do all that they do according to nature." Whatever acts, then, do not tend toward the Divine may be said to be unnatural ; whatever acts do so tend, to be natural. All nature, as such, tends to the highest order, to the Divine. At the bottom of all revolu- tions lies a conception of man as a material being ; at the bottom of all reformations, a conception of man as a spiritual being, striving to realize the Divine in himself. Having thus distinguished the two fundamental forms of Titanism, we may now ask, Under which of tlie two must we class Goethe's Titanism, — under that of Kronos, who rose up in rebellion against his own nobler offspring, Zeus, in order to restore tlie world to an older and less spiritual condition, or to that of Prometheus, who rebelled against Zeus, in favor of something more spiritual than even his do- minion ? One may answer this question without 78 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. hesitation. The Titaiiism of Goethe is for the most part the Titanism of Prometheus. And it is so in a very marked and striking way. One can hardly read Goethe's best works without being continually reminded of Prometheus. The similarity did not escape Goethe's own notice. Prometheus was a favorite figure with him, and there is perhaps no portion of his writings in which his own true charac- ter comes out more clearly than in the powerful fragment bearing the name of the great Titan. In this we find Prometheus, after having served Zeus for many years, engaged in open, outspoken rebellion against him, and yet enjoying the special favor of Zeus's daughter, Athena, the pei-sonification of wis- dom. In a conversation with her the Titan says : *' Hast thou not seen me oft, In self-elected servitude, The burden bear, which they In solemn earnest on my shoulders laid ? Have I the labor not completed, Each daily task at their behest, Because I thought that They saw what has been, and what shall be. Within the present. And that their guidance, their command, Was first, primeval and Unself-regarding Wisdom ? " Prometheus has found the limitations of the gods in whom he has been taught to believe. They know no more about the past and the future from the present than he does ; they are blind leaders of the blind, and their blindness is due to the fact that GOETHE'S TITANISM. 79 they are selfish, looking for their own enjoyment, instead of being universally diffused to bless. Pro- metheus has been able to discover these limitations of the reisninsr sods, because he has won the love of a younger and nobler divinity, — the eivig-weihliclie Athena. A declaration of this love on tlie part of Athena, coupled with an expression of respect for her father, — " Ich ehre meinen Vater, Uud liebe dich, Prometheus," — draws from the Titan these remarkable words : — " And thou art to my spirit "What it is to itself. Even from the first Thy words have been celestial light to me. Ever, as if my soul spake unto itself, It opened wide. And harmonies, born with it at its birth, Rang forth, from out itself, within it. And a Divinity Spoke when I seemed to speak. And when I thought Divinity did speak, I spoke myself. And so with tliee and me. So one, so intimate, Endless my love to thee ! " Here we find expressed in its most intense and naked form the Titanism of Goethe. It is a revolt against the outward gods of tradition and dogma, the individual gods of the current religion, in favor of the God in his own heart, the God whose kingdom of heaven is within him, who is not distinguishable 80 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. from his own inmost being, who is at once wisdom and love and the desire to be utterly diffused in creation and blessedness. When Athena blames his hatred for the gods, and reminds him that they have power, and wisdom, and love, Prometheus replies : "AH that belongs not Unto them alone : I too endure like them. Eternal are we all ! — Of my beginning memory have I none. To end I have no call. Nor see I any end. Thus am I eternal, for I am. And wisdom ! — (Directhig Athena's attention to his statues.) Look upon this brow ! Has not any finger Fully moulded it ? And all this bosom's might Bares itself to meet The universal danger round about. {Looking at a female statue. ) And thou, Pandora, Thou sacred vessel of all gifts That are delicious Under the broad heaven. Upon the infinite earth, All that e'er thrilled me with emotion sweet. That in the shadow's coolness Poured refreshing on me, All spring delight that ever the sun's love. All tenderness that e'er The sea's warm wave Around my bosom poured. GOETHE'S TITANISM. 81 All that I e'er of pure celestial glow Have tasted, or of joy of si)irit-rest — This all, all — my Pandora ! " Prometheus feels that lie has within himself all the divine attributes that he knows of, or can conceive, — power, wisdom, love. In only one thing does ho seem inferior to Zeus, in that he has not the power to give life to his creations. Zeus has offered to ani- mate them for him, if he will bow down and worship him ; but Prometheus contemptuously refuses any such condition, and Athena, that is, the divinity within him, hastens to assure him that Zeus, what- ever he may pretend, has not the giving or the taking away of life in his power. That belongs to a higher power, whom Athena calls Fate. She will herself guide Prometheus to the spring of life, and his crea- tions shall live through him. Prometheus replies : " Through thee, my goddess. Shall they live and feel them free. Live ! Their joy shall be tliy thanks." Let US linger a moment upon this word Fate, which the inner Wisdom declares to be higher than tlie gods, to be the source of life, and to impart that life through the Titanic spirit. The thought expressed by the word is a very profound one, and one that has oc- cupied the attention of the greatest thinkers and poets. Among the Greeks it had many names, corresponding to different aspects of it, Molpa, Alcra, JJeTTpojfievqj Eifiap/xevT], Kijp, ^AvdyKT) or Necessity. In their minds it generally lay, as a dim, illimitable, inscru- 6 82 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. table background, behind the brilliant array of their numerous gods, as something superior to the gods and against which they had no power. This thought occurs in several passages of the Homeric poems (II. XVIII. 117, XIX. 417, &c.), but is perhaps most clearly expressed in a passage from the third book of the Odyssey (236-238) : " The gods themselves have not the power to save Whom most they cherish from tlie common doom, When cruel Fate brings on the last long sleep." It is hardly necessary to say that the same thought permeates and dominates the whole of J^schylus's tragedy of " Prometheus." Prometheus, "the high-spir- ited son of right-counselled Justice," is more humane than Zeus himself, and farther-seeing. The conception of divinity embodied in Zeus does not satisfy him. Before bis mind floats a higher conception, and he has learnt from his mother, Justice, that this higher conception shall one day be realized, and Zeus hurled from his throne by one " who will find a flame might- ier than the thunderbolt." What is this but another way of saying that Prometheus rebels against tlie external god of the popular fancy in favor of that God whom justice proclaims in his heart ? He knows and feels that he is rooted in a power deeper and mightier than Zeus, a fate by whose eternal decree he lives and must live forever. He boasts, "What should I fear, who am fated not to die ? " The result is that Zeus is finally compelled to release him from his cruel torment, and to rise to the height of tliat GOETHE'S TITANISM. 83 ideal which Prometheus had conceived. That inscru- table fate whose mouthpiece is Justice is greater than any god conceived or conceivable in the image of man. The same thought tve might easily find, more or less clearly expressed, in many passages from the other Greek poets. We find, indeed, in some of them, and still more frequently in the philosopliers, that the impersonal Fate is identified with the highest god, that is, with Zeus ; but this does not alter the character of that fate. When Zeus becomes identified with Fate, he loses his capricious, tyrannical attri- butes, and becomes that which no imagination can conceive and no tongue adequately express, — in a word, he becomes the Absolute and Eternal. For, after all, the Greek conception of Fate or Necessity is, at bottom, a rude conception of the Absolute. Tlie Greeks, as we have already said, were far on their way to a true conception of the Divine under all its forms, extension, being, and love, — when popu- lar Christianity, with its Oriental, mythological con- cepts, took possession of the world and once more imposed upon it a mythical Deity, conceived in the image of man. In proportion as Christianity found its way among philosophers and thinkers, the notion of God fostered by it became less and less mythical and more and more philosophical, and, indeed, it would not be diffi- cult to find among the writers of the two great ages of ecclesiastical thought — that of the Fathers and that of the Schoolmen — expressions for the Divine 84 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. as philosophical as any that occur in Plotinus or Por- phyry. In no case, of course, is the expression ade- quate ; for every expression for the Divine must, to a large extent, be negative. The attempt to conceive God philosophically is especially marked in the works attributed to Diony- sius the Areopagite, — the first bishop of Athens and the patron saint of Paris, — works which in reality were produced about the end of the fourth century of our era, under strong Neo-Platonic influences. Here we are told, for example, that "the supra-essential One limits the existing one and all number, and is itself the cause and principle of the one and of num- ber, and at the same time the number and the order of all that exists. Hence the Deity, who is exalted above all things, is praised as a monad and as a triad, but is unknown to us or to any one, whether as monad or as triad ; in order to praise the supra-unified in him, and his divine creative power, we apply to him, not only the triadic and monadic names, but we call him the Nameless One, the Super-essential, to indicate that he transcends the category of being." "We might find similar expressions in Augustine and other influential waiters of the patristic period. Sim- ilarly, in that most famous of all mediaeval theologi- cal manuals, the " Sentences " of Peter the Lombard, we find it said : " The Trinity is a supreme thing and common to all that enjoy it, if, indeed, it can be called a thing and not rather the cause of all things, or if, indeed, it can be called so much as a cause." GOETHE'S TITANISM. 85 Similar expressions might be found scattered tlirougli the schoohnen, down as late as the time of Suarez, who was contemporary with Descartes. Dante, whose conception of God was eminently philosophic, tells us that Holy Writ, in condescension to our powers, *' Doth hands and feet Ascribe to God, still meaning something else." Although Catholic thought, being trammelled by mythical dogmas, could hardly ever have arrived at a perfectly consistent philosophical conception of God, it had made very considerable advances in that direc- tion, when the event of Protestantism once more im- posed upon a large j)ortion of the world an intensified mythical concept of the Divine. The popular god of Catholicism, or rather the god of popular Catholicism, a very different being from the god of philosophic Catholicism, became the supreme god of Protestantism. We all know, probably but too well, the conception of God ordinarily held in Protestant churches, and how little it differs from the old Greek popular concep- tion of Zeus. We all know, too, to what an amount of narrowness, bigotry, intolerance, uncharitableness, misunderstanding, oppression, and spiritual pride and deadness it has given rise. We know how compatible it is with almost every form of selfishness and every form of economical and political abuse. The Calvin- istic form of this conception has been stated, with a scathing force that can hardly be excelled, by Burns, in his famous " Holy Willie's Prayer," which begins : 86 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. " Thou, wha in the heavens dost dwell, Wha as it pleases best Tliysel' Sends ane to heaven and ten to hell, A' for thy glory, An' no for ony guid or ill They 've done afore thee." Burns too was a Titan, and despised this monstrous God with all his heart. It was not merely against the cruel and blasphe- mous conception of God entertained by Calvin that Goethe's Titanic scorn was directed, but against the entire Protestant conception of him, and against everything that followed naturally from that concep- tion. The words which he puts into the mouth of Prometheus, as he sits forming men in his workshop, after having refused all offers of a compromise with Zeus, no doubt accurately express his own feelings with reference to the Protestant conception of God. He says : *' While I was yet a child, Not knowing out or in, I turned my straying eye Sunwards, as if above me were An ear to hear my plaint, A heart like mine To pity the heavily-laden. " Who helped me Against the Titans' arrogance ? Who rescued me from death, From slavery ? Hast thou not all achieved thyself, Heart of sacred glow ? GOETHE'S TITANISM. 87 And, young and good, didst glow, Poor dupe, with gratitude To him who sleeps above ? " I honor thee ? Wherefore ? Hast thou e'er soothed the anguish Of the heavily-laden ? Hast ever wiped away the tears . Of the grief-oppressed ? Have I not been forged into a man By almighty Time And by eternal Fate, My lords and thine ? " And didst thou fancy I should hate life Aud flee to deserts Because all blossom-dreams Did not bear fruit ? Here sit I and mould men After mine own image, A race to be like me, To suS"er and to weep, To enjoy and to be glad. And pay no heed to thee. Like me." This poem was written in 1773, two years after the heroic radical "Gotz von Berlichingen," and one year before the still more radical " Werther," in which the worst part of Goethe's Titanic tendencies culminated. " Prometheus " gives us Titanism in the classic world ; " Gotz," Titanism in the mediaeval world; "AVerther," Titanism in the modern world, or rather in the seething world of the eighteenth century, previous to tlie French Eevolution. Of tlje 88 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. three works, " Prometheus " is tlie one that repre- sents best the spirit of Goethe's own Titanism, that Titanism which remained with him through life. The hero of " Gotz " comes to an untimely and dis- appointed end, to a death of admitted defeat, through the pressure of outward circumstances. The hero of " Werther " does still worse, for he puts an end to his own life. Prometheus alone remains Titanic to the last, defying, and with impunity defying, all ex- ternal circumstances, strong in the strength of that divinity which glows with a holy flame in his own heart. And, indeed, from the point of view of po- etic justice, this is as it should be. The Titanism which strugi^les for individual freedom throusfh mere physical courage and strength, without due regard to existiuCT institutions and moral conditions, must neces- sarily suffer defeat. Independence for an individual baron would be a retrogression toward barbarism and anarchy. On the other hand, that Titanism which seeks personal satisfaction in passive sentiment, how- ever refined, instead of in rational activity, must not only necessarily fail, but must end by making life worthless to the person who attempts it. He needs no outward circumstances to destroy him : the out- raged god within him will be quite sufficient for that. Prometheus, whose delight is in creative ac- tivity, in loving obedience to the Divinity within him, can alone safely and defiantly carry out his Titan- ism to the end. Naught can touch him who himself gives up all. GOETHE'S TITANISM. 89 It is a significant enough fact that the drama of " Prometheus " was never completed, much as the central figure was a favorite with Goethe. And the reason of this is curious. Goethe himself some- where tells us that his different works represent stages in his own culture, and that the completion of each work .marked the completion of the stage. No doubt his individual Titanism ended with " Gotz," and his sentimental Titanism, in large measure at least, with " Werther." But his Promethean Titanism never ended, until the last day of his life. It was an abiding fact in his life, indeed perhaps the most important fact in it, the source of all other important facts. P>ut Goethe, whose spiritual progress was very rapid in those years, could not but soon come to see that the conflict between Prometlieus and Zeus, the envious thunderer, could in no adequate way express the depth and extent of his own Titanism. Zeus could not be made to do duty as the conservative Philistine God of Protestantism, and Prometheus could not be made to represent all the forms of oppo- sition which had to be directed against that God. So Goethe, after writing two brief acts (and part of a third) of his " Prometheus," abandoned it, and in the following year set to work upon another theme, in which he must have felt that liis own Titanism could be much better embodied, — a theme drawn from the annals of Protestantism itself, — the story of Faust. This theme had several advantages over the other, besides modernness and adaption to Goethe's 90 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. own state of mind. It enabled him to show the ffradual grrowth of the true Titauism, out of the many forms of false Titanism, to develop its posi- tive and beneficent side, instead of its negative and defiant side, and to depict the nature of its ultimate triumph. In " Prometheus " the narrow jealous Zeus, the god of popular fancy, still reigns supreme, while the Infi- nite God " whose throne is in nien's hearts " occupies an unrecognized position of patient defiance, mould- ing men after his own image. In "Faust," on the contrary, the inner, the Infinite God is already su- preme lord of heaven and earth, seated in power among the cherubim and seraphim, while Zeus, or the god of narrow selfishness, is relegated to a small sphere in the affairs of human kind. He is, in fact, "der kleine Gott der Welt," the little god of the world, or rather of worldliness, who, as Mephistophe- les says, "always remains of the same fashion, and is as queer as on the first day." To be sure he has a glimmer of heaven's light, — even Zeus had that; but he uses it only to be more beastly than every other beast. The Supreme God, on the contrary, the Lord, so far from being jealous of any one, can afford to tolerate the very devil, and even finds a use for him. His amenity is so great as to surprise that dignitary, who remarks, at the end of his inter- view with him, that " It is r^uite handsome in so great a lord To speak so kindly witli the devil himself." GOETHE'S TITANISM. 91 The dethroned divinity, the god of worldliness, does not appear anywhere in the poem as a distinct person, nor indeed does the Supreme Divinity, ex- cept in the Prologue. The Deity, who reveals him- self in the conscience, and the little god of the world, who for the most part directs human institutions, alike appear only as tendencies working silently. The former shows his power by continually preventing Faust from yielding to the allurements of Mephis- topheles, the latter appears in the form of official re- ligion, which finds its most striking embodiment in the Astrologer at the imperial court. This dignitary is ready at once to enter into close alliance with Mephistopheles, even when the latter plays the part of court fool, so much so, that, when asked how things look in heaven, — " Wie sieht's am Himmel aus?" — he replies in a mock-serious, meaningless speech whispered into his ear by Mephistopheles. The difference between the relative positions of the great and the little deity in " Prometheus " and in " Faust " really marks the difference between the rela- tive positions of conscience and human law in ancient and modern times. In ancient times, the laws of the state and of society, both written and unwritten, were held to be superior to the individual conscience, whose exercise in opposition to them, as in the case of Sokrates, could be regarded only as v^pi<;, inso- lence, or insubordination. In modern times, on the contrary, it is universally held that conscience, when sane, has a higher claim than any human decree. 92 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. It was doubtless this fact among others that made Goethe select Faust, rather than Prometheus, as the representative of his own Titanism, It must be remarked, too, that Faust's consciousness of the Su- preme Divinity is at first very slight compared with that of Prometheus. He appears in all his splendor to the latter from the first, in the person of Athena, and draws forth his most ardent love and conse- quent activity. Faust is hardly conscious of him at all, except as a vague feeling that somehow directs him in the midst of his dark strivings. The Lord says to Mephistopheles, speaking of Faust : " Though but confusedly he serves me now, Yet will I soon conduct him into clearness." • Goethe's Titanism, then, is Prometheanism, only with the relative position of the two deities, the great and the little, changed, and the vision of the former dimmed in the soul. Whereas Prometheus lives to obey the Supreme God, whom he knows and loves, and is, therefore, supremely happy in his defiance, Faust toils on in darkness, seeking the vision of this hiuhest God, whom he finds at last, when he reaches the philanthropic position {^iX.dvOpcc'jro^ t/ootto?, as ^.schylus says) of Prometheus. Though Faust is by no means Goethe, yet Faust's problems are those which most profoundly occupied the mind of Goethe. Goethe's life, with all its activities, in so far as they had his own approval, was a Titanic struggle against the god of the world, under the inspiration of the God whom he felt in his own soul, and whom he GOETHE'S TITAN ISM. 93 recognized as speaking out of the very de^jths of being, with the voice of Fate and Justice, which in tlie last result are one. The conception of this God which we find in Prometheus is not materially altered in Faust, except that in the latter more emphasis is placed upon the fact that the wisdom which speaks with authority in the human heart and intellect is also Lord of the universe. Further we cannot go ; at least, further Goethe could not go. He deprecated all attempts to define God as a person, or as anything else. When Margaret asks Faust concerning his belief in God, the latter replies : " My darling, who dare say, I believe in God ? Mayst question priest or sage, And their answer seems to be But mockery of the asker." And when Margaret persists with " Then you do not believe ? " Faust replies in the much admired speech, of which I shall quote only a part : " Mishear me not, thou gracious countenance ! Who dare name him, And who confess I believe in him ? Who can feel And have the courage To say, I believe not in him ? "Doth not all crowd Into thy head and heart. And pulse in everlasting mystery 94 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. Invisible, visible, beside thee ? Fill full thy heart therewith, in all its bulk, And when in feeling thou art wholly blest, Then name it what thou wilt, Say bliss ! heart ! love ! God ! I have no name For it ! Feeling is all ; Name is sound and smoke, ' Beclouding heaven's glow." This speech has been very much admired, as em- bodying the highest conception of divinity possible for man. I think it is the highest conception of di- vinity to which Goethe ever attained, and the one under the influence of which he played the Titan against the God of popular tradition and worldliness. But it is by no means the highest conception of God, and its limitations mark Goethe's own limitations, and the defects in his Titanism. Two elements, and perhaps the most important of all, are omitted, — truth and right, — in one word, holiness. The God of Faust, who is in the main the God of Goethe, is not a moral God, and Emerson was entirely right when he maintained that Goethe was incapable of a sur- render to the moral sentiment. The simple fact is, that the moral sentiment, pure and simple, found no utterance in Goethe's heart, and hence could not appear in his God, who was but the bearer of the utterances that were found there. It may perhaps be objected, that it is unfair to attribute to Goethe a conception of God put into the mouth of Faust at a time when that hero was still GOETHE'S TITANISM. 95 far from God ; and this would be correct, if it could be shown that Goethe ever attained to any higher conception. Such, however, I have not been able to find in his works or in his life. Faust himself at- tains to no riper conception, even in heaven. We find many instances in which Goethe shows his comprehension of the divine nature, by declaring it to be in things, and not outside of them, and by refusing to define it in the imperfect forms of speech. In a short series of poems called " Gott und Welt," he writes : " What were a god that pushed but from without. And let the world about his finger spin ? God must be one who moves the world within, Nature in Him, Himself in Nature holding, So that what in Him lives and moves and is May never miss His power. His spirit never." And again : "a^ " There is a universe within the soul, And hence all nations laudably permit Each man to call the best he knoweth God, Yea, his God, to deliver to Him earth And heaven, to fear, and, if he can, to love Him." In "Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre," in speaking of the three forms of reverence, (1) for that which is above us, (2) for that which is below us, (3) for that which is on a level with us, he says : — " These three produce together the true religion. From these three reverences springs the highest rever- ence, reverence for oneself, and this again is the source 96 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. of the other three. Hence man arrives at the highest of which he is capable, by being allowed to consider himself the best that God and Nature have produced." In 1813, writing to Jacobi, he says : — " I, for my part, with the manifold tendencies of my nature, do not find one aspect of the Divine enough. As a poet, I am a polytheist ; as an investigator of nature, I am a pantheist, and both in the same degree. If I require a personal god for my personality as a moral being, that also has been provided for in my mental con- stitution." This last is perhaps the most explicit declaration we have of Goethe's theological belief, and it is a most important one, as showing the character of the Divinity under whose inspiration he played the Titan against the popular Divinity of his time. This Di- vinity is conceived as above number, equally capable of being conceived as one and as many, as occasion may require. In so far as he is a person, he is identical with Goethe's own personality, the very inmost core and essence of that. The notion of an individual, per- sonal God, existing outside of him, Goethe rejected with the utmost scorn, and in so doing returned to the philosophic position of developed Hellenism, — to the position of the Neo-Platouists, — as opposed to the mythical view of Christianity, and especially of Protestantism. It has often been said that Goethe was a Pagan. Even his biographer Diintzer gives him this appella- GOETHE'S riTANISM. 97 tion. This is not only correct, but it is correct in a deeper sense than is generally known. We have seen that the three forms under which the Divine has been conceived are space (or extension), being, and love. These appear in Christian theology in the mythical forms of the Father, who is being, the Son, who is space, the condition of creation, and the Holy Ghost, who is love, the source of all action in the world, as even Empedokles saw. The aspect of the Divinity which most struck the Hebrews, and which, conse- quently, is uppermost in Christ's teacliing, is that of being, or of the Father. Now, it is just this aspect of him that is the ground of morality ; for morality has its foundation, not in extension or in love, but in the very depths of being. Even love itself has a moral significance only in so far as it is distributed in accordance with the recognized exigencies of being. For this reason the Hebrews were pre-eminently a moral people, a people ready to bow before the author- ity of the Divine, a people, when at their best, obe- dient even unto death, for the sake of the right. Job can say (I quote from the revised version) : " Behold, He will slay me ; I have no hope ; nevertheless, I will maintain my ways before Him. This also shall be my salvation." (xiii. 15, 16.) Now it was just the moral aspect of Divinity that was wanting in Helle- nism. The Neo-Platonists were careful to say that God was above being {eireKeiva rov ovto^), and hence above the good. In saying this, they thought they were honoring Him ; but in truth they were losing 7 t 98 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. the moral aspect of Hira ; for the ground of all mo- rality is being. The immoral is simply that which contravenes the essential laws of being, that which strives to be and cannot. This failure to recognize God as being and as the ground of morality was the essential weakness of Hellenism from first to last, although, as one might have expected, it was formulated only when that sys- tem was near its close. Movements formulate them- selves only at their close. Goethe then, in being a Pagan, as he was, failed to see the moral aspect of the Divine. He saw it as omnipresence and as love, but not as authority. His highest god was not the absolute right and good ; it was rather the beautiful. Nay, it was not even the highest kind of beauty, that which moulds a life *' In loveliness of perfect deeds More strong than all poetic thought." It was rather the half-sensuous beauty which is capa- ble of being expressed in symmetry and rhythm, the two forms in which harmony displays itself in space and time. Calm, serenity, balance, freedom from strife, from Sturm und Drang, — these were the attributes of that perfection which Goethe aimed at, and which therefore was his God. The still, adamantine strength which speaks out the truth witliout thought of conse- quences to self, that courts strife as the life of the world, that is so strong as to be ready to accept suf- fering unflinchingly, which seeks satisfaction in ser- vice and self-diffusion, — this was not Goethe's ideal. GOETHE'S TITANISM. 99 Goethe was an artist, his spirit and temperament were those of the artist, not those of the martyr. Like an artist, he labored for finish, for completion, which has a term ; not for perfection, which stretches away into the eternal. He saw what was in process around him and divined a good deal more ; but that which lay behind tlie process he did not see. He saw evo- lution, but caught no glimpse of that which evolves. In one word, he lacked what Parmenides called faith, the vision of the eternal, of that which is, of God. He could see some of God's relations, — those to art, nature, and his own personality, — but God himself he could not see. Hence in Goethe there is none of the martyr spirit. The thought of dying to make men holy, or even to make them free, could never enter into his calculations. He wished to make his own life a complete poem, finished and harmonious in this world, and it was for the sake of this harmony that he demanded renunciation of the discordant ele- ments. The utter renunciation of self, of the natu- ral self, in order to find a self that is above nature, above process, individual, yet infinite and perfect as the Father which is in heaven is perfect, was a state of mind he could not rise to. He could not, in a word, combine Christianity with Hellenism, which is the problem of our time, but remained essentially Hellenic. The god in whose name he titanized was still an imperfect god, a duality, not a trinity. The reason why Goethe failed to find the highest God, when men like Dante, that mightiest of the mod- 100 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. ern Titans, succeeded, is not hard to discover. It lay partly in his own temperament, which was sensuous and made heavy demands. It lay partly in his edu- cation, which did not go far to curb that temperament and subject it to divine law. But it lay also in the philosophical atmosphere of his time, in the clouds of Spinozism and Kantianism that went to darken the atmosphere. Say what it may to the contrary, modern philosophy from Descartes to Spencer is atheistic in the deepest sense. It is essentially a philosophy of process, not of being, — of genealogy, not of ontology. Now God, essential being, is just that which lies out- side of all process, that transcends all evolution, that imparts all movement, but does not itself move. We may call other things God, — the process of events, the current that makes for righteousness ; but in do- ing so we are idolaters, setting up the idols of our imagination for God. And the idols of the imagina- tion are far worse gods than the graven images of men's hands. When the pure intellect and its object, essential being, are banished from philosophy, God and the true ground of moral being will soon be ban- ished from life, and false gods, or no god, will soon take His place. But, besides the three causes mentioned as pre- venting Goethe from attaining to the highest con- sciousness of Divinity, there was still a fourth, — the direction of his studies, which was toward nature and the emotional or sensuous side of spirit. Goethe rather despised logic and metaphysics, the sciences GOETHE'S TITANISM. 101 of pure spirit, but these sciences had their revenge, as they never fail to do, and as his own Mephis- topheles, as conceived in his youth, knew that they did. " Only despise intelligence and science, The highest powers accorded unto man ! In things of glamour and of magic let Thyself be hoodwinked by the spirit of lies, — Then have I thee at once without condition." Of course, no one would think of saying that Goethe fell a prey to Mephistopheles, or that he w^as a bad man. On the contrary, Goethe was a good man, in very many senses a great man : he was a Titan, trying to steal divine fire to better human lives, and in a large degree succeeding. But, after all, it was not the purest fire that he stole, but a fire dimmed with the smoke of sweet incense. Let us now try to sum up the character of Goethe's Titanism, and to show wherein it was manly and be- neficent, and where it fell short of the highest. Its greatness consisted mainly in this, that it warred against the external enslaving god of tradition and conventionality, with all his belongings in the shape of human institutions, and did so in the name of the internal, freeing God whose kingdom is within us, whose being is our being, who exists in every human soul, making us one with the Father and capable of being perfect as he is perfect. Its shortcomings were all due to the fact that Goethe was unable to conceive this inner God in his full majesty of ab- solute insight, love, and diffusive power. And this 102 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. inability again was certainly due to the fact, that in Goethe himself the inner God was not revealed in all his majesty. Only the pure in heart see God, and this for the reason that the heart is the eye where- with God is seen. But though this is strictly true, it must be admitted that Goetlie struggled manfully during his long life V to remove the film from his eye, and obtain a clearer and ever clearer view of the Divine. If he did not at any time entirely succeed, tliat was his misfortune, in the garb indeed of fortune, rather than his fault. And this leads me to say a word of the different stages of Goethe's Titanism, which I have inten- tionally left to the end. It is generally said that it was confined to the early part of his life, and practi- cally ended with his visit to Italy. Now in a certain superficial sense this is true, but only in a superficial sense. It was considerably transformed before he started for Italy ; but it did not altogether cease at any period of his life, though it tended ever more and more to become a compromise. The " little god of the world," under the influence of the great God, has be- come much wiser since the days when Zeus sent Pro- metheus to the limits of the world, to be riveted to a rock and to have his liver torn by vultures. He now not unfrequeutly takes the new Prometheuses into his service, and makes them privy-councillors, thus rendering them in large measure innocuous and ob- taining from them much good for themselves. To drop metaphor, Goethe's persistent good fortune, in GOETHE'S TITANISM. 103 the course of time, tamed and soothed his Titanism and ever made him more desirous of finding a recon- ciliation between the world-spirit and the supreme in- ward God. This tendency assumed tbe form almost of homage to the world-spirit in the later part of Goethe's life, especially during that reactionary period which followed the excesses of the French Eevolu- tion, when men, wearied with Titanic struggling and in a measure cheated of its results, turned back with a kind of pathetic fondness to the obsolete systems of the past, seeking for rest anywhere, even in a mon- astery. It would be wrong to say that Goethe at any time proved a traitor to the highest God, and did homage only to Baal ; but that he was deeply affected by the reactionary spirit that prevailed dur- ing the last decade of his life, there can be no doubt. More and more he became averse to Titanic revolu- tion, more and more in favor of quiet evolution. He disliked the volcanic theory even in geology, and said that the Protestant Eeformation had disturbed quiet evolution {stortc ruhigc Bildung). This ten- dency becomes apparent more or less in all that he wrote after Schiller's death, but especially in the clos- ing scene of the Second Part of " Faust." Here, in the summing up of his greatest work, a work begun in the Promethean spirit, some sixty years before, he altogether abandons the Titanic position, and seems to revert to the submissive attitude of Eoman Cathol- icism. Faust reaches heaven, not by his own efforts, and by bringing the reigning Divinity to terms, but \^ 104 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. by the help of good angels, conceived as the Middle Age conceived them, and by the levitating power of the purified spirit whom he had once wronged. He not merely effects a reconciliation with the popular God, but he makes entire submission to him, allow- ing himself to be carried to heaven, like a media3val saint from the cloister. No doubt Goethe allowed Faust, as a man of the sixteenth century, to do things which he himself would not have done; but there can be no doubt that, as Goethe became an old man, his early Titanism tended to lose itself in compromise and even submission. " The wise indifference of the wise " unfortunately often takes this direction. ■ But, after all, this tendency in Goethe's case is not a matter for surprise. His Titanism had not at any time been of that kind which imparts perfect satisfaction to the Titan, and can therefore endure for- ever. In that Titanism there was always an artistic and somewhat sensuous element of self. He could never entirely surrender himself to the God within him, in utter self-forgetful ness, careless of happiness. He is said to have asserted, with some pathos, toward the end of his long and marvellously fortunate life, that he had never, in all that life, known more than an hour's happiness. This shows what he had been seeking for, shows the defect in his Titanism, shows why it ended in compromise and submission. It shows also why his literary work is, after all, so frag- mentary, and why many of his contemporaries con- demned him as a renegade to progress and humanity. GOETHE'S TITANISM. 105 Had Goethe, in the days of his early Titanism, seen God, the inner God, as authority, as being, and not merely as omnipresence and love, the case would have been different. No compromise would have been needed, the want of happiness would not have been felt, his works would have had the glorious unity of the " Divina Commedia," and he would have been recognized as the uncompromising Titan, the manifestation of Very God. The truth is, Goethe wavered between the Chris- tian spirit and the later Hellenic spirit, without ever being able to unite them, for the reason that he never seized either in its purity. This union is the great problem of our time. To reject the outer god of mythology, and all his works, — to cling .to the inner God, who is the very life of our life, the self of our self, — to crush out mercilessly the little temporal self in ourselves, in order that the great, the eternal, the divine self may be free to manifest itself, — that is our task ; a task to be performed titanically by our- selves and by none other. There is no salvation any- where but in our deepest selves, no light anywhere but in the hidden shrines which we call our own souls. No outer God, with the best of wills, can save us ; for salvation means being strong in and through our- selves. It is a poor charity that pampers weakness, instead of making strong, that tries to make depend- ents, suppliants, and thralls, instead of free, pure men and women, obedient only to the laws of that kingdom of heaven which is within them, and striv- 106 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. ing to be perfect, as the Father which is in that heaven is perfect. That Goethe did not attain to this point of view is a matter to be regretted, but not one for which we can afford to blame the great poet. For many a long year he struggled manfully, with all the power that was in him, against the aggressive blandishments of good fortune, which continually reinforced the smaller self in him, and, though he did not altogether conquer in the end, he has left much work that will go far to help others to conquer. For such help, and such help alone, one man can give to another. He can point out the whither and the why of a religious life, and make it clear that there is no ultimate blessedness save in that uncompromising Titanism which fights in the name of the inner God of truth and love and right, — above all, of right. GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 107 IV. GOETHE AND SCHILLER. By CYRUS A. BAETOL, D. D. '« 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 highest matter. Action can be understood and again represented by the spirit alone. No one knows what he is doing while he acts aright, but of what is wrong we are always conscious." — Wilhelm Meisters Indenture. The authorities of the Concord School of Philoso- phy demand of me to measure the incommensurable, to compare a literary accident with an intellectual necessity, to make an equation of an event with an element. To group and paint on one canvas two so imlike characters and incomparable minds were a rash attempt, which yet must share its presumption between the assignors of such a trust and the incom- petent assignee, however unduly bold the latter may be in handling it, giving less his reasons than impres- sions leading to the conclusion that the genius of the two foremost German poets is too diverse for any common scale. Goethe's superiority is not in degree, but in kind. They lie together; so do Chamouni and Mont Blanc. Schiller might have been or not, 108 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. Goethe must have been. He was a necessity. He was hewn out of the rock he proceeded to hew from. He re-created the language his tongue lisped in the cradle. He reconstituted the nation of which he was born. To take out Goethe were to take out Germany from modern history. Napoleon, who said he found but two men in Italy, found but this one in Germany, and bluntly said to him, " You are a man," as he said to his military staff, " There is a man." But how little Napoleon dreamed that the man he nodded tliis compliment to would by his thinking and writing so unite his divided and distracted country as to be the prophet of Bismarck and Moltke, and, as the Jews fancied of their Elias, reappear after a generation, and in turn overcome the empire Bonaparte transmitted to his dynasty, at Sedan and the gates of Paris, with- in full sight of the conqueror's tomb ! Goethe was denounced as no patriot because he did not personally withstand the invader, but declared him too strong to resist. He was blamed that he did not seize the trumpet and throw away the harp. He replied, that military songs might be composed by Korner amid the neighing of horses, but not by himself sitting in a room, " When I was in love, I wrote love-songs ; why should I write songs of hatred when I did not hate ? " His contribution to freedom was his thought, and every word from his pen, though no summons to arms. That in aught beside the doctrinary devotion to native soil, which is so cheap on the Danube or the Merrimack, Schiller surpassed him, does not appear. GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 109 In the purely intellectual realm, they are to be rather contrasted tlian compared. Schiller's poetry is reg- ular, often magnificent in its bursts ; Goethe's is inspired from the universal law and order, as much part of nature and human nature as the landscape is of the world. Schiller has a fine plot, with able and admirable' execution. He produced pieces adapted to the stage. He has more personal ambition and ingeni- ous contrivance to compass, by managing the public, his literary ends ; knows how to play the game, and instructs Goethe in it, when they become a sort of business firm and a literary coalition against common foes ; but a deeper than any aim at popularity, or wish to win or please had the elder companion, — too great to be a compeer, above being rewarded, and scorning to be bribed or pre-empted ; witness to the truth of things, advocate of the universe, with but from his Creator a retaining fee. Schiller's verse is clear and sweet, and shows a rare constructive gift. He excels in the speeches he puts into his heroes' and heroines' mouths. He is quotable in many a splendid passage. His printed oratory is superb. But decla- mation is for the hour, and its platform does not abide. Eloquence, below the supreme pattern, cannot endure the test of pewter types. It is an effervescing glass, to be drunk at the moment. It is manna, tliat will not stand over to the next day. It is not lack of reflection that sets Schiller in the second rank. Eather his philosophy entangles and drowns his Muse. Nor is a basis of fact in his 110 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. compositions the want. He is historical, as for a singer he is metaphysical, to excess. He is not the warbler that Goethe is, and has not the pitch. Goethe is as the bobolink that flies and sings at once, its transporting music subsiding into a short chirp as he lights on a bough, or fence, or swaying stem in the field. No master, ancient or modern, more triumphantly than Goethe has cloven the at- mosphere of our common breath with lyrical airs. Of the transcendent bards, Homer, Dante, Shake- speare, he is the last. Homer — be it said without offence to the traditional father of song — begins to look gray with the world's longevity and the an- tiquity of letters and religious myths. Dante is supra-mundane, vexed with Italian feuds, provincial in his scope. He loves Beatrice and other divine creatures, with the Supreme Head ; but he hates many men and spirits, for whom he fashions his dread converging circles of the pit. He makes his Inferno his masterpiece. He spends himself on that, — and more on the Purgatory than the Paradise ; writes the sentence "No hope," as the frontispiece of hell, and throws the earth into eclipse with the awful shadows of other spheres. Shakespeare and Goethe are the two great poets for the modern mind, for humanity, for the hour that is coming and that now is. Goethe posts the books up to date ; insists that everything shall be natural, real, and true, pres- ent to the faith and experience of mankind. Milton treats us to stately and sonorous lines, that march in GOETHE AND SCHILLER. Ill perfect step. They are as an army at whose even and solid tread the earth trembles, while banners flaunt and sounds of drum and trumpet pierce the air. But his manner is more than his theme. He surfeits us with fabulous celestial doings, fancied dia- bolical rebellions, extra-terrestrial battles, and feux d'artijice, pyrotechnics, however by the tragedy they illustrate made sublime, yet shot off to accompany a theology that no longer can fit our condition or con- tent our moral sense. The Satan he shows issuing from the far-off under- world portals for his travels, w^th brave equipment, to compass the ruin of a dis- tant planet, precursor of all Alexander-like con- querors, Goethe with a drop of ink depicts in the shape of a poodle, starting up in a study or a street, let in or out at the corner of a diagram, dressed and talking like a gentleman, up to all the tricks of trade, plausible and persuasive as any huckster or broker, a dealer in jewelry, ready to enter a maiden's cham- ber, captivate a duenna, spur to a quarrel, and lay down on any counter the coin for the price of a human soul. He lives next door, and is at our own and our neighbor's service. We suspect his lodg- ing in our breast. Ever since Goethe wrote, in all lands we say of any cunning man-shaped devil he is a perfect Mephistopheles. Demons, angels, or mortals Goethe makes familiar spirits, domes- ticates and plants them on the earth. Natural or supernatural, they are always real ; and many of Schiller's characters beside them are as stuffed fig- 112 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. ures of tradition, or paper silhouettes cut by meta- physical scissors. Goethe's gold brightens, Schiller's lacquer taruislies and fades, with use. Why are the moth and rust at work on compositions which the school-girls thirty years ago were mad over, Don Carlos, Marie Stuart, the Bobbers, and William Tell, while Wilhelm Meis- ter. Elective Affinities, Hermann and Dorothea, mul- tiply their constituents and strengtlien their hold, and, as readers appreciate, are insured against accident ? Schiller has fared better than Goethe on the play- house boards ; but the world is the stage on which Goethe's men and women are players of his dra- matis personce, the scene being life, and society the panorama unrolled. Goethe knew good work, and therefore did it. He said, I thought I should have done some things differently from Shakespeare, but soon learned what a poor sinner I Avas, and that he is Nature's prophet : and Goethe is the same : Faust and Hamlet coequal in date, although, in the Second Part of Faust, Helena can never be popular even among scholars. The women are alike good from the English and the German draughtsman, however honestly either acquired his skill. ^Margaret and Mignon are not copies of Ophelia or Desdemona, and their colors are as fast. Shakespeare did not, perhaps could not in his lordly age, glorify like his successor a humble peasant lot. Both were close to nature, witnesses . faithful and true; and Goethe is the chief example GOETUE AND SCHILLER. 113 in history of critical and creative faculty combined. Art, he says, consists not in making beautiful descrip- tions, but in describing beautiful things. Without being intimately present for a long time with a spe- cial object, he adds, the artist cannot succeed. With Schiller rhetoric prevails over reality. He is a per- former whose expression is sacrified to his technique. " The Song of the Bell " is a fine poem ;/ Wallenstein and Thekla are noble characterizations, but fashioned by conventional rules. The author lacks the artless graces, knows too much. Goethe, with all his skill and information, obeys the genius he does not pre- tend to understand or guide. " I prefer," he says, " that the power which works in and through me should be hidden from me. I have never thought about thought. I have metaphysics enough to last me for life." Nature to him is God's anteroom and audience-chamber. He does not try or expect to reach the Sovereign Presence by climbing up some other way, or presume at the King's shoulder to dic- tate or suggest, but humbly pores over his hand- writing to peruse or spell it out. He is as physical, as much of a naturalist, including the soul, in his poetry as in his science. When Schiller complains that a lecturer had shown Nature not in her unity, but in specimens and bits, Goethe eagerly expounds to him that unity in the metamorphosis of plants, each portion as a transformed leaf. Schiller replies, that this is not an observation but an idea. Goethe rejoins, that he is glad to have eyes to behold such 8 114 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. ideas in nature. He says, " When I look, I see all there is." So he saw the topmost vertebra expanding into the skull, and the seven colors as mixtures of lio'ht and shade. Schiller did not consider that we can see, with eyes, only what the frauie of nature tends to. Newton does not see the fall, as an ap- ple, of the sphere : Kepler does not see the planetary approximations, nor Darwin the animal evolutions : they see indications and draw conclusions which the facts and motions require. Nature refuses to be caught in the very act. Goethe saw the live robe of God which the earth-spirit weaves ; and he held all the bright and dark yarn in some extra pair of hands. He portrays man, the living, moving body of the race ; not, like our Emerson, the indi- vidual mind or the Holy Ghost alone. Emerson spins a thread, Goethe weaves a web. Emerson snatches a trumpet from some angel's grasp, Goethe greets us with an orchestral symphony. Emerson fetches the top-stone of a monument or pinnacle of a temple before the structures are reared and ready ; Goethe builds from the ground with vast and com- plete design. Emerson arrives a pilgrim and stran- ger after long sojourn in a foreign land, angelic visitor from some heavenly sphere, and, shrewd though he be, gets but half-acquainted with this world; Goe- the is native to the soil, and knows every earthly mother's son and daughter by heart. None higher in aim than Emerson, more a prince among the fine spirits that have lighted up this earth with a celes- GOETHE AND SCHILCER:- 115 tial gleam: none more true to his call, which was not, like that of Shakespeare and Goethe, to set forth this human membership which we are. He is a solo- ist at the concert, his performance slenderly related to the choir. He imperfectly appreciates the func- tions of church or state. He gazes at Goethe as an antelope, gazelle, or camelopard might at Behemoth or the sreat Pan. He is the zenith which from a scornful altitude surveyed the nadir and the poles. Yet Emerson draws from Goethe. " And e'en the grass shall plot and plan What it will do when it is man, " comes after Goethe's encouragement to the Proteus Delphis in " Helena," — " Through myriad forms of being wending, To be a man in time thou 'It rise." So hard it is to be original. The last shall be first and* the first last. Emerson and Darwin are antici- pated, exceeded, and included by Goethe. The most generous of admirers, Emerson notes the merits of his senior contemporary without justice to his supreme human representative claim. "Faust," the crowning product of the nineteenth century, is to his dainty mind a disagreeable book, as if a poem, epic or dramatic, could be made of the leav- ings when all the sad and dark passages of the world- tale should have been erased; the critic not seeing that it is only against the facts or materials of the tragedy that his objection holds. He complains that 116 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. Goethe neither surrenders himself to the torrent of inspiration nor devotes himself to the absolute truth ; cares for art for the sake of culture, and is not even an artist because not incorporating all the matter of his pages in artistic form ; the censure from other quarters being that Goethe is artist too much with determination of blood to the head at the cost of the heart. Puritan clashes with cosmopolitan. Emerson writes to Carlyle, " Goethe can never be dear to me " ; and, in his " Eepresentative Men," that he can never be dear to mankind. Sterling wrote to Carlyle that Goethe is not to be loved, and Carlyle cries back, " Who has the right to love him ? " " Goethe was a wicked man," exclaimed a lady lecturer ; and a bad man he was long before pronounced to be by a Cambridge orator, who describes him as inwardly felicitating him- self on the rich accession to his artistic domain from discreditably precious experiences, and deriving mate- rial for poetry from sufferings wantonly caused. That moral worth is essential to intellectual success was the orator's point, which he declared he would not give up for a hundred Goethes, — as if the earth had not labored in bringing forth one ; and that it was too soon to conclude that Goethe as a man of letters does succeed ; that the love and enthusiasm of the German heart ran to Schiller, the true, earnest, whole-souled man with his great, glowing, outpoured heart. Forty- one years are gone since this conscientious prevision, and time as yet gives no backing to the seer, who did not foresee. Time cannot be so cheaply subsidized GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 117 and suborned. Time seems to be of the opinion, that a man may have faults or defects, or commit immo- ralities, as Moses and David and Solomon did, and as in some way and measure all men, the harsh judges included, do or may have done, and yet not be reck- oned as refuse for the dunghill; but repent and be pardoned, even be exalted, like him who slew the Egyptian in a passion, or like the Hebrew Psalmist, or his son, with his bitter-sweet proverbs for part of the canon ; or like St. Augustine, head father of tlie Church, when a boy ; or, to take illustrations from our own day, like some platform speaker, Christian profes- sor, or occupant of a presidential chair. The condon- ings of history make a strange chapter when mixed with the decrees of the moral sense. To say that Goethe gloated over the sin, while he gathered up the lesson, is a calumny. Sin would play all of us a worse trick than it does, if we learned nothing from it. Shall we revile Peter for turning with beautiful petri- faction his inconsistencies into a rock, or Paul for making fuel of his persecutions to kindle his devotions to super-heat? When we assail David for his fifty- first penitential Psalm, issue of his adultery, it will be in season to attack Goethe for the pathetic strains that accompany or follow his unhappy slips of like sort. Stones will not be so plenty and at hand if the iimo- cent, who are never known to throw them, are com- missioned to cast the first. " That," said the visitor, pointing to a picture on the wall, " is a St. Cecilia." "No," replied the lady, "a Magdalen." "Pardon 118 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. me, my eyes are so poor," he answered, " I cannot tell a sinner from a saint." An ill opinion of human virtue exaggerates, both in individuals and the com- munity, the sum of sexual vice, till a malaria of sus- picion confounds the general virtue, and covers like a baleful fog the laud. Goethe, born with immense susceptibility, bred in an atmosphere which French license and German sentiment mixed for his breath, and becoming like a city set on a hill, erred too often and conspicuously to be hid. History must mark him, not as treacherous or insincere in his affections, but volatile, inconstant, lacking that consecration whose mutuality between two persons, man and woman, is the right, duty, and glory of both. But it demoralizes society to decide that the unmarried may not have friendships as pure as they are dear. Great men are too scarce to be thrown away, even for grievous faults. Consult proportion in what you judge. Measure the mountain, as well as the rift in its side. We accept vast benefits from and for them own our debt to Webster, Hamilton, as factors and benefactors ; and to Samuel Johnson, mournfully con- fessing, "Ah! T have not lived as I ought." Schiller's record appears to be free from this particular blot, to which, by his cleaner or less passionate constitution, he was not exposed. But how his loyal wife be- friended Goethe, and promoted confidence in the two identified homes ! But Schiller's early pen left some stains ; and he had sins, of as deep a dye as his friend's, in the jealousy which made him say of GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 119 Goethe, "This man stands in my way"; in the am- bition which proposed his own honor for his object, as well as, if not more than, the common good, and the indirection with which he sometimes brought his purposes to pass, — in contrast with Goethe's sim- plicity, royal generosity, and the modesty with which he accepted criticism of his own writings for more than- it was worth. His ability at such a multiple distribution as he made of his own heart is a flaw- The two parts of God's image whose sundering is sex tend, run, fly together, and collisions occur. The ever-womanly draweth us on ; the ever-manly too, what woman will not add? But desertion of another, even for the sake of one's own supposed destiny, is a crime ; and doubtless there are eyes fine enough to see where Goethe's work suffered for his mistake. Among the appreciators of Goethe, why such warmth in Thomas Carlyle, a man so pure, so slow to praise and quick to blame ? Was it that he found in Goethe, for once, no sham, but a veracity without par- allel in the literary guild, — words like those nails in the Bible by the Master of assemblies fixed, fastened, driven in a sure place, written on an iron leaf, — and an originality unmatched in this age ? We can find a touch of Carlyle and of Emerson in Wordsworth, in Thomas Browne, and in Montaigne. But, says Dr. Hedge, Goethe lighted his torch at the sun. Perhaps Carlyle, resembling Goethe in his truthful testimony, admired also what he wanted himself, and never quite attained, the serenity of the great author, as if he sat 120 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. in the star Sirius with a pen reaching to the eartli, — from the subjects he was identified with so wondrously remote ! But he was wicked ? No, such an altitude as his is impossible for a bad man ! Satan, the Devil or evil one, is restless, goeth up and down, seeking whom he may devour. Says Miss Shepherd, author of " Counterparts," — " Show me poetry of a bad man, and I will show you wherein it is not poetry." • Tlie impartial, disinterested justice with which such au- thors as Shakespeare and Goethe enter into the char- acters they depict, or without comment impale, like Izaak Walton loving the bait he fished with, is goodness. We are preached to or at by essayists, as well as from the pulpit ; but open the books of these poets, and we are in the midst of people, a swarm of our fellows, as kindly dealt with as by Him that made them, as equitably treated as all will be at the last bar on the judgment-day. Inordinate passion turns to poison with the ingredient of a lie. political or clerical fornicator, beware of that ! A Cato or Brutus, stern patriot, severe moralist, professed phi- lanthropist, Goethe is not. " As for wind and sun, and the good of the human race, let Heaven take care of them to-day as it did yesterday." But good he pre-eminently is. His heart, said Jung Stilling, which few knew, was as great as his head, which all knew ; and his wisdom born of the lieart amazes us as a new Book of Proverbs. His "Ajjothegms" was the one volume Emerson took on his journey. When GOETHE AND SCniLLER. ' 121 the creation was finished, God said, It is all good. So says Goethe. He accepts the situation, and he is master of it. He does not quarrel with the world, that sits at his easel, more than Stuart or Eeynolds with their models. He is an optimist, and would let all people into heaven, with the goats not on the left hand. . Had he not thought it worth his while to draw, as the Lord did to shape, goat or sheep? He delights in Spinoza's pantheism. He is not a re- former. He fancies things and folks to-morrow will be very much as to-day. He copies for approval into his journal the Latin motto of Thraseas, " Who hates vice hates mankind," and subjoins a maxim of his own. Our vices and our virtues grow from one and the same root. Whatever else he may or may not be, he is not malignant. He comprehends, and does not exclude. Schiller is vehement and diplo- matic. Herder is morose. Goethe may be stiff, but never loses his grand benign balance, only exceptions to his theory of colors irritated him a little in his old age. Let "The Sorrows of Werther" and "Gotz of Berlichingen " attest that his calmness, what carpers call coldness, was acquired ! Vesuvius has overflowed, with whatever vineyards the sleeping volcano may clothe its sides. Only inward harmony could beget songs classic as Pindar and simple as Burns, — some dear image being with him in the fairest spot. " Dearest Lili, if I did not love thee, How transporting were a scene like this ! Yet my Lili, if I did not love thee, What were any bliss ? 122 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. " Alas ! the gentle bloom of spring no longer Cheereth my poor heart ; There is only spring and love and nature, Angel, where thou art." Some other heart was always in his breast, though those looking on knew it not, and from his love for the prototype of Ottilie he bears the arrow long sticking: in his own heart. Whatever the trausgres- siona in whose shame the so-called victims, whose victim he was, partake, and however excelled he was by Schiller in the home-integrity, which is a corner- stone of the commonwealth, Goethe's temper was goodness to every creature that breathes, from an instinctive piety with which the child of seven rears an altar to the Deity, as before he is eight he writes German, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek. His disgust is loud at the horrible tapestry, from the history of Jason, Medea, and Creusa, with which, as an unwilling portent of her fate, the French artists salute the young queen, on her way to Paris, Marie Antoinette. He is no coward. To cure himself of sensitiveness to painful sights and of a tendency to giddiness, he ascends the dizzy cathedral-top, wit- nesses hideous surgical operations, as Dickens got over sea-sickness by a score of resolute crossings of the British Channel. He ploughs on foot through the snows to the Furca, and seeks the smell of powder, feels the cannon fever mid flying balls on the battle- field. To call him dissolute is not to describe such a man. He is religious, believes in God and immor- GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 123 tality, reveres the Bible, bows before Christ, refuses, chief scientific genius as he was of his time, to admit a scientific basis for religion, it being its own ; a nat- uralist, he sees in nature more than can be reduced to natural laws, even an infinite beauty and unspeakable charm. He repents where he has been misled, and, in " Elective Affinities," deposits sad experiences, he says, as in a burial-urn. He judges that the sentiment of faith concerns us more than the object on which it is fixed. In his account of Fraulein von Klettenberg, he gives us a record of private worship equalled no- where out of Holy Writ, although he imagines some- what self-conscious in such homage as she renders ; and he playfully assures her he considers the Deity in arrears with him, and is called a foolish fellow for his presumption by her purified lips. In all his immersion in the Kantian philosophy, in which Goethe also wades and dredges, Schiller discovers no more of the substance of God than was revealed to the flitting fancy of his envied rival unawares, who found the proof of Heaven, a belief which was its own evidence, in the action of his soul. If he was for a while the pleasing sinner he calls Philina, he was no sour saint. He puts into Faust's mouth a doxology, ascription to the Most High which no hymn-book can vie with, expounds a threefold reverence in a way to instruct every theologist; and, making prayer justify itself, dispenses beforehand with Mr. Tyndall's hospital-gauge. Do the next 124 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. duty, renounce, worship sorrow, are his lessons. The priests cannot keep his offerings out of their contri- bution-box, however they bluster their condemnation on his head as they carry it round. His mental hospitality in cordially accepting, after Schiller's half-honest aversion and backbiting coquetry and his own Olympian vows, the inferior man of letters to his friendly glowing embrace, to receive from him not very important encouragement and advice, is dem- onstration of radical magnanimity. When Schiller, ten years his junior, is sick, he is troubled, anxiously inquires, divines from the silence of those around him that the end has come, says Schiller is dead, covers his face with his hands, and laments an irre- parable loss. In the delirium preceding his own death he sees a bit of paper on the floor, and asks why so careless as to leave Schiller's letters in that fashion lying round loose, — his affection, as the living wave ebbed in his bosom, showing its unsounded depth. In England the man who has rated Schiller high- est and studied Goethe most is Thomas Carlyle. It is like the praise of Sir Hubert Stanley when he makes Goethe of modern literature the head. Schiller was but the Mercury to that Jupiter, with whom Carlyle might be in some sense and measure a competitor had he become as peaceful and sunny as he was strong ; could he have spoken the Yea of liis own " Sartor Eesartus " and left behind him the everlasting No, to learn the power of ideas as well as of will, and to perceive how mighty Goethe was, not in tak- GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 126 ing a partisan side in whatever affair was in question, but in thinking it all out and with glad content; not wishing to be brilliant, doing justice in his portraits to things and persons the most dull and common- place, but genuine in every way, because he dis- cerned how the repetition of forms and phrases ossifies the organs of intelligence. Goethe was a son of the morning ; he wrought as the elements, he changed the climate and emancipated the human mind. Car- lyle wielded the hammer of Vulcan, struck Cyclo- pean blows, and heated, to fashion anew and better, the old metal of the earth's annals. Standing round the strong and sweating craftsman, we feel like boys in whose faces fly the sparks and cinders from the blacksmith's forge. But, as he looks up, his honor for the unfallen German Lucifer is not less trust- worthy by reason of the limits of his own position. He especially delights in the easy and airy style in which by his superior the miracle is done. But let me give specimens, such as translation of German into English allows. Take Miguon's death-song, in her gala attire, as she declines to be undressed. " Such let me seem till such I be, — Take not my snow-white dress away ! Soon from this dusk of earth I flee Up to the glittering lands of day. *' There first a little space I rest, Then wake so glad to scenes so kind ; In earthly robes no longer drest, This band, this girdle, left behind. 126 LIFE AND GENIUS OF GOETHE. " And those calm shining sons of morn, They ask not who is maid or boy; No robe, no gannents, there are worn, Our body pure from sin's alloy. " Through little life not much I toiled, Yet anguish long this heart has wrung ; Untimely woe my blossom spoiled, Make me again forever young." Lyncens, charged by Faust with neglect of warder duty when Helena arrives, explains his dereliction : — " Let me kneel and gaze upon her. Let me live or let me die. Pledged to serve with truth and honor The god-given dame am I. to" *' "Watching for the morning, gazing Eastward for its rising, lo I In the south, my vision dazing. Rose the sun, a wondrous show. *' Neither earth nor heaven -ward turning, Depth nor height my vision drew; Thitherward I gazed, still yearning Her the peerless one to view. *' Eyesight keen to me is granted. Like to lynx on highest tree ; From the dream which me enchanted Hard I strnggletl to be free. *' Could I the delusion banish ? Turret, tower, barred gateway, see ! V