Goethe's Theory of the intention of the Supernatural with regard to the Visible." After all, what does it all come to ? God did not retire to rest after the wellknown six days of creation, but, on the contrary, is constantly active as on the first. It would have been for Him a poor occupation to compose this heavy world out of simple elements, and to keep it rolling in the sunbeams from year to year, if He had not the plan of founding a nursery for a world of spirits upon this material basis. So He is now constantly active in higher natures to attract the lower ones."—Ibid. vol. ii. p. 426.

Goethe's Doctrine of Immortality.-"Kant has unquestionably done the best service, by drawing the limits beyond which human intellect is not able to penetrate, and leaving at rest the insoluble problems. What a deal have people philosophised about immortality and how far have they got? I doubt not of our immortality, for nature cannot dispense with the entelecheia. But we are not all, in like manner, immortal; and he who would manifest himself in future as a great entelecheia must be one now. . . . . To me the eternal existence of my soul is proved from my idea of activity. If I work on incessantly till my death, nature is bound to give me another form of existence when the present one can no longer sustain my spirit."-1bid. vol. ii. pp. 193, 194, and p. 122.

Goethe's Image of Life.-" Child, child, no more! The coursers of Time, lashed, as it were, by invisible spirits, hurry on the light car of our destiny; and all that we can do is, in cool self-possession, to hold the reins with a firm hand, and to guide the wheels, now to the left, now

D

to the right, avoiding a stone here, or a precipice there. Whither it is hurrying, who can tell? and who, indeed, can remember the point from which it started?"-Egmont.

Man's proper business." It has at all times been said and repeated that man should strive to know himself. This is a singular requisition; with which no one complies, or indeed ever will comply. Man is by all his senses and efforts directed to externals-to the world around him; and he has to know this so far, and to make it so far serviceable, as he requires for his own ends. It is only when he feels joy or sorrow that he knows anything about himself, and only by joy or sorrow is he instructed what to seek and what to shun." -Eckermann's Conversations of Goethe, vol. ii. p. 180.

The Abstract and the Concrete, and the Subjective and the Objective." The Germans are certainly strange people. By their deep thoughts and ideas, which they seek in everything, and fix upon everything, they make life much more burdensome than is necessary. Only have the courage to give yourself up to your impressions; allow yourself to be delighted, moved, elevated-nay, instructed and inspired by something great; but do not imagine all is vanity if it is not abstract thought and idea. It was not in my line, as a poet, to strive to embody anything abstract. I received in my mind impressions, and those of a sensual, animated, charming, varied, hundred-fold kind, just as a lively imagination presented them; and I had, as a poet, nothing more to do than artistically to round off and elaborate such views and impressions, and by means of a lively representation so to bring them forward that others might receive the same impressions in

hearing or reading my representation of them. A poet deserves not the name while he only speaks out his few subjective feelings; but as soon as he can appropriate to himself and express the world he is a poet. Then he is inexhaustible, and can be always new; while a subjective nature has soon talked out his little internal material, and is at last ruined by mannerism. People always talk of the study of the ancients; but what does that mean, except that it says 'Turn your attention to the real world, and try to express it, for that is what the ancients did when they were alive?' Goethe arose and walked to and fro, while I remained seated at the table, as he likes to see me. He stood a moment at the stove, and then, like one who has reflected, came to me, and, with his finger on his lips, said to me, I will now tell you something which you will often find confirmed in your own experience. All eras in a state of decline and dissolution are subjective; on the other hand, all progressive eras have an objective tendency. Our present time is retrograde, for it is subjective; we see this not merely in poetry, but also in painting and much besides. Every healthy effort, on the contrary, is directed from the inward to the outward world, as you will see in all great eras, which have been really in a state of progression, and all of an objective nature.'"-Ibid. vol. i. pp. 415, 416, and pp. 283, 284.

Rule of Individual Activity.-"The most reasonable way is for every man to follow his own vocation to which he has been born and which he has learnt, and to avoid hindering others from following theirs. Let the shoemaker abide by his last, the peasant by his plough, and let the king know how to govern; for this is also a

business which must be learned, and with which no one should meddle who does not understand it."-Ibid. vol. i p. 134.

Right and Wrong: The habit of Controversy.-"The end of all opposition is negation, and negation is nothing. If I call bad bad, what do I gain? But, if I call good bad, I do a great deal of mischief. He who will work aright must never rail, must not trouble himself at all about what is ill done, but only do well himself. For the great point is not to pull down, but to build up; and in this humanity finds pure joy."—Ibid. vol. i. p. 208. Goethe's own Relation to the Disputes of his Time.-"You have been reproached,' remarked I, rather inconsiderately, 'for not taking up arms at that great period [the war with Napoleon], or at least co-operating as a poet. 'Let us leave that point alone, my good friend,' returned Goethe. It is an absurd world, which knows not what it wants, and which one must allow to have its own way. How could I take up arms without hatred, and how could I hate without youth? If such an emergency had befallen me when twenty years old, I should certainly not have been the last; but it found me as one who had already passed the first sixties. Besides, we cannot all serve our country in the same way; but each does his best, according as God has endowed him. I have toiled hard enough during half a century. I can say that, in those things which nature has appointed for my daily work, I have permitted myself no relaxation night or day, but have always striven, investigated, and done as much, and that as well, as I could. If everyone can say the same of himself, it will prove well with all. I will not say what I think. There is

more ill-will towards me hidden beneath that remark than you are aware of. I feel therein a new form of the old hatred with which people have persecuted me, and endeavoured quietly to wound me, for years. I know very well that I am an eyesore to many; that they would all willingly get rid of me; and that, since they cannot touch my talent, they aim at my character. Now, it is said that I am proud; now, egotistical; now, immersed in sensuality; now, without Christianity; and now, without love for my native country and my own dear Germans. You have now known me sufficiently for years, and you feel what all that talk is worth.

The poet, as a man and citizen, will love his native land; but the native land of his poetic powers and poetic action is the good, noble, and beautiful: which is confined to no particular province or country, and which he seizes upon and forms wherever he finds them. Therein he is like the eagle, who hovers with free gaze over whole countries, and to whom it is of no consequence whether the hare on which he pounces is running in Prussia or in Saxony.'"-Ibid. vol. ii. pp. 257, 258, and p. 427.

Whoever has read these sentences attentively, and penetrated their meaning in connexion, will see that they reveal a mode of thought somewhat resembling that which we have attributed to Shakespeare, and yet essentially different from it. Both poets are distinguished by this, that they abstained systematically during their lives from the abstract, the dialectical, and the controversial, and devoted themselves, with true feeling and enjoyment, to the concrete, the real, and the unques