[140] W. Scherer was the first to identify Herder with Satyros.
[141] Satyros was not published till 1814, after Herder's death, but he was aware of its existence.
[142] Max Morris, op. cit. iv. 81.
[143] The following passage from an article in the Hibbert Journal, by M. Bergson (October, 1911, pp. 42-3), is an interesting commentary on Goethe's conception: "If, then, in every province the triumph of life is expressed by creation, might we not think that the ultimate reason of human life is a creation which, in distinction from that of the artist or man of science, can be pursued at every moment and by all men alike; I mean the creation of self by self, the continual enrichment of personality, by elements which it does not draw from outside, but causes to spring forth from itself?"
[144] Viktor Hehn pointed out that the drama and the ode are inspired by different motives, and that it was in forgetfulness that Goethe associated them.—Über Goethe's Gedichte, p. 160. Bielschowsky (Goethe, Sein Leben und Seine Werke, i. 510) suggests that the ode may have been intended as the opening of Act ii.
[145] Sir Frederick Pollock dates "modern Spinozism" from this incident.—Spinoza: His Life and Opinions (London, 1880), p. 390.
[146] While writing a defence of his friend Lessing against the charge of atheism, Mendelssohn's mental agitation was such that it was believed to have occasioned his death.
[147] Turgenieff relates that on translating passages from Satyros and Prometheus to Flaubert, Edmond de Goncourt, and Daudet, all three were profoundly impressed by the range and power displayed in them.
[148] It is one of the ironies of Goethe's literary career that, in his later years, in the period of his reaction against the formlessness that had invaded German literature, he, with the approval of Schiller, translated Voltaire's Mahomet, and staged it in Weimar.
[149] It is this conception, as he himself tells us, that Renan applied to the life and teaching of Jesus.