These are said to have been “Mehr Licht!” (more light), and they are often quoted as if they were regarded as worthy of a philosopher and great writer. They are commonly looked upon as having reference to increased enlightenment of the mind and soul only, which we must, or should, all of us desire and long for. Probably Goethe had nothing more in his mind than plain ordinary physical light. On the near approach of death, light, which in the case of old people has been for years gradually producing less and less impression on the sensorium, ceases, in many cases, to produce more than the faintest impression, and so the dying person imagines himself to be in the dark, and calls out for more light. And this, most likely, was the case with Goethe.
A Rational View
Here is a passage from the last letter traced by the hands of George Sand, which is singularly like to a saying of Goethe on his death-bed: “I am not one of those who shrink from submission to a great law and rebel against the end of universal life.” Is it not told of the great German that he broke a long silence by this wise and consolatory utterance: “After all, this death is so general a thing, it cannot be an evil thing.”
Avoidance
Dr. Charles F. Deems, the genial pastor of the Church of the Strangers, New York City, on reaching his seventieth birthday, thus briefly gave out the secret of his successful and happy life:
The world is wide
In time and tide,
And God is guide,
Then—do not hurry.
That man is blest