than the plague itself. The other picture | different meaning. He cannot conceive is that of Brother Martin in "Götz," the pleasure without energetic action, and the young monk who envies Götz his life so most necessary of all pleasures to him is full of movement and emotion, while he is that of imaginative creation. The dehimself miserable under the restraint of sires, again, for which he claims satisfachis vows. Here, again, the complaint is tion what are they? Chief among them that no good comes of such abstinence. is the desire to enter into the secret of the The life of self-denial is conceived as an universe, to recognize "what it is which utter stagnation, unhealthy even from a holds the world together within." Such moral point of view. It is contrasted with desires as these might be satisfied, such a life not of luxury, but of strenuous en pleasures enjoyed, without any very culpaergy, at once wholesome and useful to the ble self-indulgence. And existence would world. be satisfactory, or, as he calls it, barmoni. ous, if it offered continually and habitually food for desire so understood, which is almost the same thing as capacity. But there are hindrances. The chief of these is the superstition of self-denial. Of course every practical man knows that self-denial of a certain kind must be constantly prac tised in life. The small object must be foregone for the sake of the greater, the immediate pleasure for the sake of the remote, nay, the personal pleasure for the sake of the pleasure which is generous and sympathetic. But the timid superstition which sets up self-denial, divorced from all rational ends, as a thing good and right in itself, which makes us afraid of enjoyment as such, this is the chief hindrance, and against this Goethe launches his chief work, "Faust." There is an other hindrance, less obvious and needing to be dealt with in another way, which Goethe therefore attacks usually in prose rather than in poetry. So far, then, Goethe's position is identical with that which Protestants take up against monasticism, when they maintain that powers were given to be used, desires implanted in order that they might be satisfied. He does not, any more than they, assert that when some great end is in view it may not be nobler to mortify the desire than to indulge it. But he applies the principle more consistently, and to a greater number of cases than they had applied it. Not against celibacy or useless self-torture only, but against all omission to satisfy desire, against all sluggishness or apathy in enjoyment understood always that no special end is to be gained by the self-denial-he protests. In his poem, called the “General Confession" ("Generalbeichte ") he calls his followers to repent of the sin of having often let slip an opportunity of enjoy ment, and makes them solemnly resolve not to be guilty of such sins in future. Here, at least, the reader may say, self- Man, as Goethe conceives him, is esishness is openly preached; and perhaps sentially active. The happiness he seeks this is the interpretation most commonly is not passive enjoyment, but an occuput upon the poem. Yet it is certainly pation, a pursuit adapted to his inborn unjust to pervert in this way an intentional capacities. It follows that a principal paradox, and, in fact, in that very poem condition of happiness is a just self-knowlGoethe introduces the most elevated ut edge. He will be happy, who knows what terance of his philosophy; for the vow he wants and what he can do. Here again which the penitents are required to take Goethe gives importance to a doctrine is that they will "wean themselves from which in itself is obvious enough by the half-measures and live resolutely in the persistent energy with which he applies Whole, in the Good, and the Beautiful!" it. He has been himself bewildered by Goethe, in short, holds, as many other the multiplicity of his own tastes and philosophers have done, that an elevated morality may be based on the idea of pleasure not less than on the idea of duty. This principle, not new in itself, led to very new and important results when it was taken up not by a mere reasoner but by a man of the most various gifts and of the greatest energy. By "pleas. ure or "satisfaction of desire "is usually meant something obvious, something passive, merely a supply of agreeable sensations to each of the five senses. In Goethe's mouth the word takes quite a aptitudes. He has wanted to do everything in turn, and he has found himself capable to a certain extent of doing everything. Hence the question - What is my true vocation? has been to him exceptionally difficult. In studying it he has become aware of the numberless illusions and misconceptions which hide from most men the true nature of their own aptitudes, and therefore the path of their happiness. He finds that the circumstances of childhood, and especially our system of educa tion, which "excites wishes, instead of respect it is only the fullest of a number of utterances to the same effect made by Goethe, it can never be fully appreciated when it is considered by itself, but must be judged in the closest connection with his other works and with his life. Every attempt to treat such a subject as morality awakening tastes," have the effect of cre- | ter" is even more important than the ating a multitude of unreal ambitions, form. It presents the whole subject of deceptive impulses and semblances of morality under a new light, and as in this aptitudes. He finds that most men have been more or less misled by these illusions, have more or less mistaken their true vocation, and therefore missed their true happiness. On this subject he has collected a vast mass of observations, and, in fact, added a new chapter to practical morality. This is the subject of "Wil-in an original manner has something helm Meister," not the most attractive nor the most perfect, but perhaps the most characteristic, of Goethe's works and, as it were, the textbook of the Goethian philosophy. It is said not to be widely popuular in Germany. Most English readers lay it down bewildered, wondering what Goethe's admirers can see in it so extraordinary, and astonished at the indifference to what we have agreed to call morality that is, the part of morality that concerns the relations of the sexes - - which reigns | throughout it. I shall touch on this latter point later. Meanwhile, let me remark, that few books have had a deeper influence upon modern literature than this famous novel. It is the first important instance of a novel which deals principally and on a large scale with opinions or views of life. How Wilhelm mistook his vocation, and how this mistake led to many others; how a secret society, the Society of the Tower, taught a doctrine on the subject of vocations, and of the method by which men are to be assisted in discovering their true vocations; how Wilhelm is assisted and by what stages he arrives at clearness this is the subject of a long and elaborate narrative. It is throughout most seriously instructive; it is seldom very amusing; and we may add that the moral of the story is not brought out with very convincing distinctness. But it has been the model upon which the novel of the present day is formed. Written twenty years before the Waverley Novels, which are in the opposite extreme, since they make no serious attempt to teach anything and dwell upon every. thing which Goethe disregards, adventure, surprise, costume, it began to produce its effect among us when the influence of the Waverley Novel was exhausted. The idea now prevalent, which gives to the novel a practical as well as an artistic side, the idea which prompts us, when we wish to preach any kind of social or moral reform, to write a novel about it, seems to have made way chiefly through Goethe's authority. But the substance of "Wilhelm Meis alarming about it. Such attempts ought different from that commonly accepted of | ian poetry. But when war gave place to questions about which we are all so anx-industry, it seemed that this grand unity ious. Such a course may lead us to see of human life was gone. Business, the mistakes made by modern Christianity, which may have led Goethe also into mistakes by reaction; whereas the other course, of simply averting our eyes in horror, can lead to no good. We may distinguish between the positive and the negative part of this moral scheme. All that "Wilhelm Meister" contains on the subject of vocations seems valuable, and the prominence which he gives to the subject is immensely important. In considering how human life should be ordered, Goethe begins with the fact that each man has an occupation, which fills most of his time. It seems to him, therefore, the principal problem to secure that this occupation should be not only worthy, but suited to the capacity of the individual and pursued in a serious spirit. What can be more simple and obvious? And yet, if we reflect, we shall see that moralists have not usually taken this simple view, and that in the accepted morality this whole class of questions is little considered. Duties to this person and to that, to men, to women, to dependents, to the poor, to the State these are considered; but the greatest of all duties, that of choosing one's occupation rightly, is overlooked. And yet it is the greatest of duties, because on it depend the usefulness and effectiveness of the man's life considered as a whole, and, at the same time, his own peace of mind, or, as Goethe calls it, his inward harmony. Nevertheless, it is so much overlooked that in ordinary views of life all moral interest is, as it were, concentrated upon the hours of leisure. The occupation is treated as a matter of course, a necessary routine about which little can be said. True life is regarded as beginning when work is over. In work men may no doubt be honest or dishonest, energetic or slothful, persevering or desultory, successful or unsuccessful, but that is all; it is only in leisure that they can be interesting, highly moral, amiable, poetical. Such a view of life is, to say the least, unfortunate. It surrenders to deadness and dulness more than half of our existence. important half of life, became unpoetical, from the higher point of view uninteresting-for how could the imagination dwell on the labors of the office or the factory? -and all higher interest was confined to that part of life in which energy is relaxed. Goethe's peculiar realism at once prompts and enables him to introduce a reform here. He denies that business is uninteresting, and maintains that the fault is in our own narrowness and in our slavery to a poetical tradition. It is the distinction of "Wilhelm Meister" that it is actually a novel about business, not merely a realistic novel venturing to approach the edge of that slough of dulness which is supposed to be at the centre of all our lives, but actually a novel about business as such, an attempt to show that the occupation to which a man gives his life is a matter not only for serious thought, but that it is a matter also for philosophy and poetry. That such a novel must at first sight appear tame and dull is obvious; it undertakes to create the taste by which it can be enjoyed, and will be condemned at once by all who are not disposed to give it a serious trial. But the question it raises is the fundamental question of modern life. Comprehensive and practical at once, Goethe's mind has found out that root of bitterness which is at the bottom of all the uneasy social agitations of the nineteenth century. We live in the industrial ages, and he has asked the question whether industry must of necessity be a form of slavery, or whether it can be glorified and made into a source of moral health and happiness. It is commonly said that "Wilhelm Meister" seems to make art the one object of life; but this is not Goethe's intention. He was himself an artist, and, as the work is in a great degree autobiographical, art naturally comes into the foreground, and the book becomes especially interesting to artists, but the real subject of it is vocations in general. In the later books, indeed, art drops into the background, and we have a view of feminine vocations. The "Beautiful Soul" In primitive times, when the main busi-represents the pietistic view of life; then ness of life was war, this was otherwise. Then men gave their hearts to the pursuit to which they gave their time. What was most important was also most interesting, and the poet when he sang of war sang of business too. Hence came the inimitable fire and life of Homeric and Shakespear Therese appears in contrast, representing the economic or utilitarian view; finally, Natalie hits the golden mean, being prac tical like Therese but less utilitarian, and, ideal like her aunt, the pietist, but less introspective. On the whole, then, the lesson of the book is that we should give US. world must disclose themselves to a lov. Thus it is, then, that art and science taken together, the living, loving, worshipping contemplation of nature, out of which comes the knowledge of nature, are to Goethe religion. But is not such a religion wholly different from religion as commonly understood, wholly different from Christianity? unity to our lives by devoting them with hearty enthusiasm to some pursuit, and that the pursuit is assigned to us by nature through the capacities she has given It is thus that Goethe substitutes for the idea of pleasure that of the satisfaction of special inborn aptitudes different in each individual. His system treats every man as a genius, for it regards every man as having his own unique individuality, for which it claims the same sort of tender consideration that is conceded to genius. But in laying down such rules Goethe thinks first of himself. He has spent long years in trying to make out his own vocation. He has had an opportunity of living almost every kind of life in turn. It was not till he returned from Italy that he felt himself to have arrived at clearness. What was Goethe's vocation? Or, since happiness consists in faithful obedience to a natural vocation, what was Goethe's happiness? His hap. piness is a kind of religion, a perpetual rapt contemplation, a beatific vision. The object of this contemplation is nature, the laws or order of the universe to which we belong. Of such contemplation he recog It was, indeed, very different from such nizes two kinds, one of which he calls art Christianity as he found professed around and the other science. He was in the him. In his youth Goethe was acquainted habit of thinking that in art and science with several eminently religious persons, taken together he possessed an equivalent Fräulein von Klettenberg, the Frankfurt for what other men call their religion. friend of his family, Jung Stilling, and Thus, in 1817, on the occasion of the ter- Lavater. He listened to these not only centenary of the Reformation, he writes a with his unfailing good humor, but at poem in which he expresses his devout times with more conviction than "Dichtresolution of showing his Protestantism, ung und Wahrheit" would lead us to supas ever, by art and science.* It was be- pose. In some of his early letters he cause his view of art was so realistic, that himself adopts pietistic language. But he was able thus to regard art as a sort of as his own peculiar ideas developed themtwin sister of science. But the principle selves, they separated him more and more involved in this twofold contemplation of from the religious world of his time. At nature is the very principle of religion the time of his Italian journey, and for itself, and in one sense it is true that no some years afterwards, we find him speakman was ever more deliberately and con- ing of Christianity not merely with indifsciously religious than Goethe. No man ference, but with a good deal of bitterness. asserted more emphatically that the en- This hostility took rather a peculiar form. ergy of action ought to be accompanied As the whole disposition of his mind leads by the energy of feeling. It is the con-him towards religion, as he can no more sistent principle of his life that the whole man ought to act together, and he pushes it so far that he seems to forbid all division of labor in science. This is the position taken up in "Faust," which perhaps is seldom rightly understood. Science, according to "Faust," must not be dry analysis pursued at a desk in a close room; it must be direct, wondering contemplation of nature. The secrets of the "Will ich in Kunst und Wissenschaft, help being religious than he can help being a poet, he does not reject religion but changes his religion. He becomes, or tries to become, a heathen in the posi tive sense of the world; for the description of Goethe as the great heathen is not a mere epithet thrown at him by his adversaries. He provoked and almost claimed it in his sketch of Winckelmann, where, after enthusiastic praise of the ancients and of Winckelmann as an interpreter of the ancient world, he inserted a chapter entitled " 'Heidnisches," which begins thus: "This picture of the antique vision of faith." Again, when in the spirit, absorbed in this world and its good" Wanderjahre" he grapples constructhings, leads us directly to the reflection tively, but somewhat too late, with the that such excellences are only compatible problems of the nineteenth century, we with a heathenish way of thinking. The find him assuming a reformed Christianself-confidence, the attention to the pres-ity as the religion of the future. ent, the pure worship of the gods as ances- May we then regard Goethe as one who tors, the admiration of them, as it were, in reality only opposed the corruptions of only as works of art, the submission to an Christianity even when he seemed to opirresistible fate, the future hope also con-pose Christianity itself? Certainly other fined to this world, since it rests on the worldliness does not now appear, at least preciousness of posthumous fame; all this in England, as a necessary part of Chrisbelongs so necessarily together, makes tianity. Surely that contrast between the such an indivisible whole, creates a condi- healthy spirit of antiquity and the morbid tion of human life intended by nature her- ness of Christianity, which was like a fixed self, that we become conscious, alike at idea in the mind of Goethe's generation, the height of enjoyment, and in the depth need not trouble us now. Those sweepof sacrifice and even of ruin, of an inde- ing generalizations belonged to the infancy structible health." Clearly when he wrote of the historical sciences. Medievalism this (about 1804) Goethe wished and in- does not now seem identical with Christended to pass for a heathen. And, in- tianity. The sombre aspect of our religion deed, the antique attracts him scarcely at is clearing away. Christian self-denial all from the historical side-he is no now appears not as the aimless, fruitless republican, no lover of liberty-but al- mortification of desire which Goethe demost exclusively because it offers a reli- tested, but as the heroic strenuousness gion which is to him the religion of health which he practised. The world which and joy. Christians renounce now appears to be, not the universe nor the present life, but only conventionalism and tyrannous fashion. With such a religion, Goethe's philosophy is sufficiently in harmony. According to these definitions the spirit even of "Wilhelm Meister" is not secular. Even his avowal of heathenism comes to wear a different aspect when we find him writing thus of the religion of the Old Testament: "Among all heathen religions, for to this class belongs that of Israel as much as any, this one has great points of superiority," etc. (he mentions particularly its "excellent collection of sacred books"). So that, after all, Goethe may only have been a heathen as the prophet Isaiah was a heathen! Is it, then, true that Christianity is a system of morbid and melancholy introspectiveness, sacrificing all the freshness and glory of the present life to an awful future? He makes this assumption, and had almost a right to make it, since the Christianity of his time had almost exclusively this character. He was, how ever, himself half aware that there was all the difference in the world between the Christianity of his time and original Chris tianity or Christianity as it might be. And even at the time of his greatest bitterness he drops expressions which show that he does not altogether relinquish his interest in Christianity, but keeps open for himself the alternative of appearing as a reformer rather than an assailant of it. In the third period and the old age his tone is a good deal more conciliating than in the passage above quoted. In the autobiography he appears, on the whole, as a Christian, and even makes faint attempts here and there to write in a style that Christians may find edifying. He tells us expressly that he had little sympathy with the Encyclopædists, and, in a passage of the "West-östlicher Divan," he declares with real warmth that he has taken into his heart the glorious image of our sacred books, and, as the Lord's image was impressed on St. Veronica's cloth, he refreshes himself in the stillness of the breast in spite of all nega tion and hindrance with the inspiring Thus hindrance after hindrance to our regarding Goethe as a great prophet of the higher life and of the true religion disappears. There remains one which is not so easily removed. What surprises the English reader in " Wilhelm Meister" is not merely the prominence given to art, or the serious devotion to things present and to the present life, but also the extraordinary levity with which it treats the relations of men and women. book might, in fact, be called thoroughly immoral, if the use of that word which is common among us were justifiable. More correctly speaking, it is immoral through The "An diese Religion halten wir fest, aber auf eine eigene Weise." |