The erring philosopher is attended on the wrong road by a laughing devil, Mephistophiles, who leads him through scenes of the wildest frolic and the most appalling wretchedness. All that is most deplorable, most frightful in human life, is here displayed with the running comment of the dæmon whom Omnipotence does not confound; and the most awful problems of divinity and moral philosophy are treated with pathetic sadness by the wretched victim, or with infernal satire by his master-slave. These repulsive elements are nevertheless combined with the soothing, not to say sanctifying, influence of a Margaret, a confiding, loving, innocent woman, whose very destruction works on the heart like an act of grace, and prepares the spectator for the promised salvation of her lover.
In the romance, as in the drama, Goethe commenced a career which he immediately abandoned. His Werter breathes a spirit of dissatisfaction with the world and its institutions. But by writing that book, which infected the rising generation with the same spirit, he cured himself of the disease; and he then became the declared foe of the sentimental, which he attacked in his romantic comedy, ‘The Triumph of Sentimentality.’
In later years, when he was become the meditating philosopher, and, at the same time, indulged in more cheerful contemplations of life, he produced ‘Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship,’ intended to elucidate problems of psychology. The stage being the symbol of life, his hero is thrown among players, and both the real drama, and the drama of life are analyzed, with perpetual illustrations of the one by the other. After an interval of some years, Goethe, in a second part, exhibited his pupil advanced as on a sort of journey. Conscious that his problem, like that of Faustus, was insoluble, he has not dared to exhibit either Faustus in heaven or Wilhelm as a master. Like the Faustus, Wilhelm Meister is still ‘caviare to the million.’
In a third romance, ‘Elective Affinities,’ Goethe treats subtilely of that passion to which Lord Bacon says “the stage is more beholden than the life of man.” As the chemical title suggests, he shows how the felicity of a married couple is marred by the intrusion of other minds, with which each consort has more affinity than with the companion previously chosen.
When ‘Wilhelm Meister’ first appeared, the narrative of Wilhelm’s childhood was related with such spirit and air of truth, that it was believed to be the author’s own personal history; and, in truth, the resemblance between the feigned and real history was soon made manifest by the appearance of Goethe’s own memoirs, under the puzzling title ‘From my Life: Fiction and Truth;’ so entitled, to allow for the unconscious illusions to which we are exposed, when, in advanced life, we try to recollect the occurrences of childhood, and unintentionally confound memory with imagination. These memoirs, including his foreign travels, amount already to nine volumes, and others are to follow; but these earlier volumes treat solely of the author’s intellectual life. Concerning much that men are inquisitive about, he says nothing. Not a hint is dropped concerning the fortune of his father, or the amount of profit which he himself derived from his writings. His being ennobled was an incident which he thought too unimportant for notice; and of honours and distinctions conferred on him he seldom condescends to speak.
Among the studies which partook of Goethe’s attention were antiquities and the fine arts. This led to the composition of a masterpiece, his critical characteristic of Winkelman, and an account of Hackert, the landscape painter. The same course of study led him to translate that delightful work, the auto-biography of Benvenuto Cellini, which was first made known to the European public by the Earl of Bristol, late Bishop of Derry, and which is now in the hands of all lovers of the fine arts. On art, in its various branches, Goethe’s prose writings are very numerous. As a critic also he has written much, and his criticism is remarkably indulgent and generous.
Such being the variety of works in which he has recorded his speculations on man, his powers, his actions, and his productions, it will be naturally asked, what were the main features of his philosophy, and to what results did they lead on those great points which unhappily disunite mankind, religion and politics?
Hume has well designated the great varieties of intellect and moral character by the significant scholastic names of the Platonist, the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Sceptic. According to this classification, it may be said that Goethe was too devotedly attached to the study of nature and actual life to be a Platonist; he loved contemplation too intensely, and was too indolent and self-indulgent to be a stoic; he was too intellectual to be a gross sensualist, or, in the worst sense, an Epicurean; and he had too much imagination to be able to tolerate the modern rational philosophy, a mere system of negatives. In so far, therefore, he was an enemy of vulgar scepticism; yet, blended with the refinement which the poetic mind presupposes, he had a large portion of scepticism and Epicureanism in his nature. Towards the positive religion which he found established in his own country he manifested respect, though he never made any distinct profession of faith upon doctrinal matters; he conformed however to the Lutheran church. On two occasions only do we recollect the expression of any strong feeling as to religion. He early betrayed great contempt towards the German Rationalists, whom he rather despised for their shallowness than reproached with being mischievous. His love of Rome by no means reconciled him to the Church of Rome, against which he would inveigh with a warmth unusual in him. He maintained that Catholic superstition had deeply injured the poetic character of Calderon, and considered the Protestantism of Shakspeare as a happy accident in the life of that incomparable man. It appears from his memoirs, that Judaism and Christianity had occupied his mind very seriously from his childhood. He delighted in portraying the Christian enthusiast in a tone of kindred enthusiasm, as in his ‘Confessions of a Beautiful Soul,’ of which the original was a Moravian lady, his friend; and it was only in incidental bursts of sarcasm, especially in his gayer poems, that he alarmed the timid and the scrupulous. In spite of occasional ebullitions of spleen or rash speculation, he was habitually hostile towards the French anti-religious party. He makes his devil in Faustus describe himself as the “spirit that always denies,” in the same way that Alfieri scornfully terms Voltaire “Disinventor ed Inventor di nulla.” It was this negative, this merely destructive character, to which Goethe was in all things most resolutely opposed.
This sentiment extended to politics. Long before the words “Conservative” and “Destructive” were applied to English parties, Goethe had made frequent use of them. It was the tendency of his mind to look with indulgence, if not with favour, on whatever he found in the exercise of productive power. Laudo manentem might have been his motto. He saw in the French revolutionists, as in their philosophers, the spirit of destruction, and he clung with affection to institutions under which so many fine arts and rapidly advancing sciences had flourished. With reference to public life, Goethe has been severely reproached on two grounds. He has been accused of wanting patriotism; but before a passion can be generated, an object must be presented. What country had Goethe to love in his youth? A walled city, which he could run round before breakfast. The first great political event which he witnessed, was the Seven years’ war. His native city was in the possession of the French, whom one party considered as allies and the other as enemies. Goethe’s father adhered to Frederick, his grandfather was attached to the Imperial House: at the best he could love but half a nation. Hence Wieland said, “I have no fellow-countrymen; I have only sprach-genossen,”—speech-mates. Thus German patriotism could be but a sort of corporation spirit; like the affections of a liveryman, confined to the members of his company. It was not till the close of the last war that the common oppression exercised by Bonaparte generated a common hatred towards France, and with it something like patriotism on a great scale. Yet so anomalous is the condition of Germany, that at this moment this sentiment, or the loud avowal of it, is looked on as akin to disloyalty; and, at the universities, students are forbidden to frequent clubs, or to assume denominations, which have a reference to one general national character. There are few appeals among Goethe’s writings to national feeling; and, in truth, his studies led him to be, in sentiment, the fellow-citizen of the great poets and artists of all nations, the contemporary of the great men of all ages. The other reproach is, that, being admitted to familiarity with princes, he lost his love of the people, as such. Now, it must be owned, that in this respect he felt pretty much as Milton did, in whom attachment to the aristocracy of talent was a marked quality. Of the people, as such, he seems to have thought lowly; his affections were exercised on the select few,—the nobles of nature, not of the herald’s office. That he had no vulgar reverence for persons in authority, or for the privileged orders, is amply proved by all he wrote. It may finally be remarked, as the most characteristic feature of his moral speculations, that he had habitually contemplated mankind, not as a moralist, but as a naturalist. There are some thinkers who never consider men but as objects of praise or blame; others, who only study men with a view of making them different from what they are. Such are reformers, the leaders of institutions, philanthropists, who think only in order to act. To neither of these classes did Goethe belong. He took men as he found them; he was content to take society as he found it, with all its complex institutions. He was disposed to make the best of what he found, but seemed reluctant to waste his powers in the vain attempt to make men materially different from what they were before; hence arose an inert, or indolent acquiescence in what he found existing.
He had early in life laboured to catch a new point of view from which nature might be contemplated on all sides; or a law in conformity with which the manifold operations of nature might be seen as if they were one. He first made this idea known in his ‘Metamorphosis of Plants.’ His botanical studies were continued for many years of his life. He afterwards busied himself with the minute and experimental study of chromatics. He edited a journal of science, and wrote more or less on mineralogy, geology, comparative anatomy, optics, and meteorology. A metaphysical spirit runs through all these writings, so alien from the mode of study pursued in other countries, that we do not recollect any notice of them by any English writer, except Professor Lindley, in his ‘Introduction to Botany,’ who confines his remarks to Goethe’s botanical works. The Professor represents Goethe as having revived a nearly-forgotten doctrine, first promulgated by Linnæus. But, for thirty years after the first appearance of the ‘Metamorphosis,’ it produced little or no effect even in Germany. Now, indeed, “it has come to be considered the basis of all scientific knowledge of vegetable structure.” Whether, in the revolutions of opinion, the bold polemical writings of Goethe against the Newtonian theory of light and colours will ever be looked upon as more than the extravagances of a great genius wandering out of his own sphere, time will show. For the present this is the view taken of the great poet’s scientific writings, both by Italians and Frenchmen. But, whatever dreams he may have mixed up with his investigations, Goethe was no mere dreamer: to the last hour of his life, he made it his business to inform himself concerning the progress of the sciences in foreign countries. All new books were brought to him, even to the end of his life; he composed elaborate poems at the age of seventy; and when beyond sixty years of age, entered with zeal upon the study of Oriental poetry, to apply the spirit of which, to Western notions and feelings, he composed his ‘West-Eastern Divan.’ In this the infinite variety of his studies and pursuits lay that ‘all-sidedness’ (if we may be pardoned for adopting such a word from the German) for which he was so remarkable. From the same quality proceeded that unusual toleration of novelties which he could reconcile to the love of what is established. He would not permit a clever farce to be acted on the stage, when he was manager, written in derision of Gall’s cranioscopy. Instead of joining in the ridicule of animal magnetism, he would fairly investigate its pretensions. When a book on the Clouds was published by Howard, in England, Goethe instantly wrote an account of it, inventing appropriate German words to designate the forms pointed out. In his hunger and thirst after knowledge, he was omnivorous. This was the ruling passion strong in death. Only the evening before his decease he received some new books from Paris, by which he was greatly excited. It is said that a volume, by Salvandy, was grasped in his hand when he died; and his last words were singularly appropriate to his temper, and might be received by his admirers as almost prophetic. He ordered the window-shutters to be opened, exclaiming, “More light! More light!”