But long before imagination has proceeded to the results named, another grand fructifying force has come to its aid, namely, Love. "The ever-womanly leadeth us on." Love,—it is, we may say, a chemical change in the man, like the conversion of starch into sugar, or grape-juice into wine. Full of sweetness and sweet intoxication, it belongs to the profoundest economies of Nature; and he who with his whole soul and body has once loved is another being henceforth. Acid or even putrid fermentations may set in; but what he was before he cannot be again. Goethe, therefore, follows Nature in placing this next to imagination as a producer of growth,—next in Nature and in Goethe's pages, because its alliance with imagination is so immediate and intimate. He who does not idealize does not love.
But here also is peril. Love, while filling Wilhelm's being with those precious heats which are the blind substance of all chivalry and nobility, clothes the stage with the added enchantment of Mariana's presence, and so bewitches the poor youth with still more of that "false tendency" which is his proper Satan. Moreover, by rushing headlong toward consummation, and overleaping the bounds of prudential morality, it brings both upon Mariana and himself sore retributions. Her, poor child, it hurries to the grave; him it pushes to the grave's brink, and stores even his recovered strength with anguish and a lifelong regret.
Goethe is accused of immorality. He does, indeed, depict grave errors without exclaiming over them, without holding up his hands, or playing any pantomime of horror. Moreover, a love pure in its essence, but heedless in its procedure, he persists in naming pure, though heedless. But he indicates, with a rigor that is even appalling, the retributions which pursue levity and precipitation, not to mention things worse. I have read many books which gave more moral stimulation than "Wilhelm Meister"; I have never read any which, while frankly acknowledging that Nature's blessing goes more with noble essence than with decorous form, yet indicates with equal power the iron nerve of moral law that runs through and through the world.
And now, as third performer in this real drama of growth, comes forward a redoubtable figure, the Sense of Self. His reputation, indeed, is not of the best. All, it is true, embrace him privately; but most think it decorous to disavow him in public.
On the whole, I is a very serviceable pronoun; and equally its complement in consciousness is serviceable. Welcome, Ego, to your place! The feeling of Self is the nominative, the naming case, in the syntax of consciousness. But, as, by the rules of grammar, the nominative is to be made the subject of a verb, so in the grammar of growth this self-feeling is subjected to the grand verbum, the action and total significance of one's existence.
Bring it out, then, clearly, pronounce it with due distinctness and force, that it may be clearly and definitely subjected.
Nature attends to that. She secures the nominative in her spiritual syntax. And so there is a period in earlier life when this feeling of self is getting pronounced. Very pronounced it is sometimes, a little severe in its emphasis upon delicate ears. And, indeed, if it come without adjective, without gentle qualification, almost any hearer must confess that he has known sounds more musical.
In Wilhelm it is sweetly qualified with love and imagination. It appears in luxuriant dreams of the poet's life,—of him who is not merely a pen-poet, but a living lyric, a poet in heart and soul. "And this life of true glory," cries the heart of Wilhelm, "may be mine, mine!" A gentle and magnanimous egoism, but still an egoism. But the due subjection of this self-feeling will come duly; in the qualifications that even now make it lovely the sure promise of that is contained.
Fourth in order appears a much prettier figure, namely, Philanthropy, the loving desire to serve man. It is, indeed, at first, sufficiently sweeping and ambitious. No half-way work, no boy's play here! He will regenerate the race; he will ennoble humanity, without sparing one caitiff of them all; he will establish it on some perpetual mount of transfiguration; and all by the magic of stage effect. No boy's play!
All this, too, is noble and vital. With exquisite appreciation Goethe depicts it, seeing well how vital it is in essence,—seeing, too, how vapory it is in form. Who knows better than he that to crave service, and to crave it in love, and to crave it without limit, is of the very substance of all that enriches man? To whomsoever this divine longing is foreign all the profound uses of life are foreign; he is barren as beach-sand.