Lavater’s individual feeling was, perhaps, but an anticipation of that which may become general, universal. As we rise in the scale of being, as we become more gentle, spiritualised, refined, and intelligent, will not our “physical affinity” with the religion of Christ become more and more apparent, till it is less a doctrine than a principle of life? So its Divine Author knew, who prepared it for us, and is preparing and moulding us through progressive improvement to comprehend and receive it.
89.
Goethe speaks of “polishing up life with the varnish of fiction;” the artistic turn of the man’s mind showed itself in this love of creating an effect in his own eyes and in the eyes of others. But what can fiction—what can poetry do for life, but present some one or two out of the multitudinous aspects of that grand, beautiful, terrible, and infinite mystery? or by life, does he mean here the mere external forms of society?—for it is not clear.
