It may be that I have never read to the core any one grand, representative book. How, indeed, amid the tumult and toss of our sea-sick life, is one to do so? How, again, while the presses of all literary capitals swarm with books that in one way or another demand attention, shall one do justice to books which are to be read as life is lived,—not in a minute? Only by some hardihood can one pronounce it possible. But if to any great book I have done this justice, it is to that above named.
At the first reading, "Wilhelm Meister," as a whole, was quite opaque to me, while some of the details were unpleasing, and the coolness of tone seemed to betoken coldness of heart; and it was only the observations and aphorisms, scattered like a profusion of pearls through the work, that drew me to it a second time. On a second reading, a year later, I began to see that the characters were representative of permanent classes,—that they were not only "samples to judge of," as Carlyle says, but samples by which to judge of human nature. At a third reading, after another interval, I began to get some glimpse of a total significance. And when, a year later, I took the book with me to the coast of Maine, and lived with it, in-doors and out, for a solid month, this significance came forth clearly, and made that month's reading almost equivalent to a great experience.
It is now nearly ten years, since, chiefly for my own behoof, but also not without an ultimate eye to publication, I drew up a formal statement of that which the book stood for to my mind. Time has added much to that material; for the work steadily grew upon me, and now and then extorted, as it were, notes, special dissertations, word-clutches at the meaning of the whole. And now, taking a hint from the handsome new edition, I propose to smelt this rough ore and send it forth, to fare as it may with the readers of the "Atlantic." The liberal editor allows me two papers of not far from ten pages each, in which to make this statement,—not, one sees, without some tolerant wish that a smaller space had sufficed. But even now I cast aside half my material, and double my labor in seeking brevity for the rest.
The typical history of growth in a human spirit,—"Wilhelm Meister" is that. Can you conceive of a theme more enticing? And this, too, treated by one of the master minds of the world. Why do not we shut up our shops, and leave the streets deserted, till the import of this has been exhausted? Who can afford to pass it by? Precious, indeed, must be his time, who for this has none!
The history, I said, is typical. Botanists picture for us a plant which represents the idea of all vegetable form. Goethe, who led botanists to this central treatment, here takes up growth in a human soul, and proceeds with it in a similar way. He recognizes those spiritual forces which, obscurely or visibly, work in all; he recognizes equally the conditions, inward and outward, under which growth takes place; he depicts these in their advent, their collisions, their interplay, their result.
A spiritual physiology we may name it. He gives not merely the typical form, but also the working processes, and the type of these. Nor does he merely enumerate and describe these, after the manner of science, but pictures them in their total action and final unity. Of such a work, wrought out with so much of penetration and power, one can speak coolly enough only by effort.
But the whole is not yet said. Not only does he delineate the idea of growth in man, but he assumes this as the central use and meaning of the world. "Positive philosophy" will groan. Give it the smelling-bottle, and leave it. Goethe does not deign it even a denial; without pausing to say, he sovereignly assumes, that Nature, as her supreme function, is the school-mistress of man. For the results enshrined in his spirit, suns shine, worlds wheel, and systems "move in mystic dance, not without song." Through the long toil out of chaos to orderly completion and green fertility, Nature bore in her heart one constant, inspiring hope,—at last to educate a man. To this end are all times and seasons; to this end are government, property, labor, rest, pain, and peace; the world of things and the world of events alike draw meekly near to the crescent soul, and tender to it their total result, saying,—"In thee, only in thee, do we come at length to use."
This, then, is the task at which Goethe toiled for many an earnest year. He will read through world to man, and through all man's fortunes, inward and outward, to the complete constitution and perfect architectures of his spirit. Let him succeed in that, and the word of words for our century and for many centuries is spoken. "Positive philosophy," with complacent sciolism, may still coldly asseverate that the world is a dead congeries of "laws," into whose realm man is cast to take pot-luck in the universe; but we shall know better. The worldling may still find all good and all evil in the mere fortunes of man; we shall see beyond these. The fatalist may persist in regarding limits and conditions as the all in all of life; we shall see them as a foothold for growth. Once that the spirit of man appears as the final recipient and vessel of uses, the orderly emptiness of world-law is filled with a meaning, while the wild welter of man's fortunes and the rigid fixity of his conditions find alike sufficing centre around which their orbit is drawn.
Observe, however, that we have here no piece of system-making. Goethe does not attempt a final scientific theory of existence. He pictures life from this point of view. If you can feel the verity in this picture, you may then feel the same verity in that picture which Another has painted, namely, in life itself.
Observe, once more, that even here life is depicted only from one of its two poles, and that, perhaps, the lesser. The theme is Growth, and this growth is considered as proceeding from definite elements contained in man's being, and proceeding to definite results still contained in his being. "Faust" assumes the opposite pole. Its theme is Destiny. It regards man's life as sweeping down upon him from heights above his thought, and proceeding to ends beyond his imagination. His existence appears as fashioned in essence and end by predestinating power, and the Eternal "takes the responsibility."