in his Prometheus, a poem which both Lessing and Jacobi pronounced thoroughly pantheistic. The play of Egmont assumes all along the presence of a divine force working through human action in obedience to its own fatal tendencies. "Man imagines that he directs his life, that he governs his actions, when in fact his existence is irresistibly controlled by his destiny." One of the most admired passages in the whole play is the following, in which the doctrine of a free necessity is taught: "I see before me spirits, who, still and thoughtful, weigh in ebon scales the doom of princes and of many thousands. Slowly the beam moves up and down; deeply the judges appear to ponder; at length one scale sinks, the other rises, breathed on by the caprice of destiny, and all is decided." Goethe would carry this doctrine of a fate, working unhindered in and through man, so far as to make men irresponsible for their religious beliefs. "In faith everything depends on the fact of believing; what is believed is perfectly indifferent. Faith is a profound sense of security for the present and future; and this assurance springs from confidence in an immense, all-powerful, and inscrutable being. The firmness of this confidence is the one grand point; but what we think of this being depends on our other faculties, on even our circumstances, and is wholly indifferent.” 1 We should hardly expect a writer, whose chosen sphere is poetry and fiction, to make his theoretical views very prominent. We must look for them, rather, in the general tone of his works, and in the spirit actuating his favorite characters. Goethe held that it is the business of literature not to teach or mould men, but to paint the life of 1 Autobiography, Vol. II., p. 15. nature and society. Claiming to be only an artist in all his writings, he was careful not to give them a dogmatic. or controversial air. Nevertheless, the under-current of theory is traceable almost everywhere; nor is writings. he able always to keep back decisive utter- Tone of his ances of his views. We have just noticed some of these; and still others remain, for one or two of which room shall be made. In his Wilhelm Meister the following words are put into the mouth of Theresa, one of the least faulty characters in the work: "I cannot understand. how any one can believe that God speaks to us through books and histories. If the universe does not immediately explain our connection with him, if our own heart does not explain our obligation to ourselves and others, we can scarcely expect to derive that knowledge from books, which seldom do more than give names to our erros." Even in the noble poem of Faust, that grandest creation of Goethe's genius, he does not keep his pantheistic creed out of sight. Margaret fears that the man she so tenderly loves is not a Christian. He evades her questions, and strives to quiet her mind by uttering this rhapsody: "The All-embracer All-sustainer, Doth he not embrace, sustain Thee, me, himself? Lifts not the heaven its dome above? Doth not the firm-set earth beneath us lie? 1 Wilhelm Meister (Bohn's edition), p. 430. 1 Nature's impenetrable agencies, Are they not thronging on thy heart and brain, Around thee weaving their mysterious reign? I have no name for it 'tis feeling all. Name is but sound and smoke Shrouding the glow of heaven." This confession of faith, put into the mouth of Faust, fails to satisfy Margaret. It strengthens the suspicion that her lover is not a Christian, though it makes ample room for the religion she professes, and for all the sad indiscretion into which she has been tempted. He, and she, and the religious faith of each, and the wild love which has drawn them together, are alike but forthputtings of the divine essence of all things, every motion of which is sacred, and to obey which is our true worship for the time being, though external standards of right should condemn the act, and only feelings of bitter remorse result from it. No critic has been bold enough to claim that he fully understands this poem. Yet the clew to it, if I mistake not, is Goethe's own experience. As in nearly all his works, so here, only more profoundly, he deals with those deep heart-troubles which his own wild doings had occasioned, and seeks repose in that pantheistic scheme which makes all human conduct both fatal and divine. In all his writings, as in those now quoted, Goethe claims that he is purely an artist. But he holds that it is the province of art to represent life. Yet life means the free play of all the forces of nature, of which every passion or instinct of man is a part, and the artist must first experience whatsoever he would represent. Nothing in our humanity is evil, but it is altogether sacred and divine. True holiness forbids us to repress any longing, and consists in acting out to their utmost all our impulses and desires. "The result of all my thoughts and endeavors was the old resolution to investigate inner and outer nature, and to allow her to rule herself in loving imitation. I sought to free myself internally from all that was foreign to me, to regard the external with love, and to allow all beings, from man downwards, as low as they were comprehensible, to act upon me, each after its own kind." 1 The two Now, the impression which this pantheistic view of life and the function of the writer makes on us, must depend almost altogether upon the nature of the subjects which happen to be treated. The compass of the instrument is without limit; and the tones it gives forth will excite joy or pain, at the pleasure of the performer. Goethe's theory enables him to charm that which is highest, and gratify that which is lowest, in human nature. He stands within a pantheon where our noblest and basest passions may all be gathered. If we complain that he throws a halo of divinity about vice and crime, we must also own that he paints virtue in some of its sublimer forms. He makes no difference in kind between the good and the bad, but honors them both alike in their turn. There are two Goethes, and while listening to one we almost doubt the existence of the other. We see nothing to offend our moral sense, for instance, 1 Autobiography, Vol. I., pp. 469, 470. As a student of nature. while we look at him in his scientific studies. Here the subject is one which hardly admits of moral distinctions. The pantheist may deal with natural phenomena as justly as the Christian, though indulging a worship of nature which Christianity forbids. Goethe might have been a great naturalist, had he not chosen to be a poet. As it is, his name will never cease to be mentioned with honor by the friends of science. He was an observer, rather than an interrogator of nature; and like the idealist that he was, his conclusions were generally the starting-points in researches: yet he established facts, and threw out hints, which have led on to some of the most marvellous results in scientific thinking. The history of comparative anatomy In anatomy. cannot be written without reference to him. His discovery of the intermaxillary bone in man overturned a false theory in science which had prevailed for centuries; it went far to establish the truth, so fruitful in the hands of his successors, that the osseous structures of all living animals are built up after a single pattern. He it was, too, who first called attention to the fact that the skull, in man and all animals, is simply a terminal vertebra in the spinal column, more or less expanded. Scientific men hailed this discovery, as they did the other, with delight; and from it sprang the doctrine, now established, that all the bone any animal has is back-bone, — either the main column or one or more of its offshoots. In botany, also, Goethe's work on the Metamorphoses of Plants may be said to have suggested, if it did not originate, what is now the distinctive doctrine and boasted glory of modern science. He showed, more or In botany. |