But life is not a mere pendulum. Nature works to her ends. There is oscillation, but also growth. And so, though Wilhelm recurs to his illusions, and even embodies them by going upon the stage, the seeds of discriminating judgment are sown in his heart, and are already germinating.
Travel, with observation of men, and the attempt to work with them, sobers him further. He begins to recognize limits and conditions, and to do so without surrendering his hopes and happy dreams. He perceives, little by little, that there are some men who can give and receive help, and some who can do neither,—some with whom one can nobly coöperate, others whose hands approach his own only to obstruct and entangle. He sees that he himself is limited, and that possibly the world might not fare so much better in his hands than in those of its Maker. It dawns upon him, that, on the whole, he is not here to make worlds, but to work in a limited sphere and for limited results. And yet his hopes and imaginations are not put to shame; for he feels, that, even amid these iron limits of labor and effect, a result of unlimited, absolute worth is also getting wrought.
And now, in this harmonizing of heat and cold into one tempered economy, in this recognition of limits and conditions, without surrender of inspiring imagination and hope, he approaches the term of his wandering, and nears home.
This consummation is hastened in what may seem a singular way,—by reading Shakspeare. These matchless pictures of real life give him, as life itself had never given, the feeling of real. The sentiment of Reality, for the first time, awakens in power. It is much, almost infinitely much, he perceives, to be just this, real. The smallest reality—so with some astonishment he discovers—affords more scope to imagination itself than any conceivable magnificence of make-belief. Real,—rooted in eternal Nature, with a pedigree older than the stars! Is not any pebble, if we consider its advent into existence and its cosmic relations, enough, not only to occupy, but to beggar imagination? Existence,—is not that the one inexhaustible fact? He feels it so, and in that feeling the contending opposites of his being come to sudden reconciliation.
Reality,—the hard, cold, critical understanding has done no worse than to insist upon that. But it has insisted upon that after its own cold fashion, as a mere frozen surface, giving no warm and fruitful hospitality to the divine seeds of hope, love, and imagination. On the other hand, the angels of Wilhelm's heart have fled away from reality because they accepted this representation. Suddenly they find this their true home. Now, then, they will sow in the clouds no longer. Reality, beneath its hard, limited outside, opens to them its divine bosom, and says, "Ye also are real: sow here."
And now the boards feel thin under Wilhelm's feet. Enough of these. Enough of masquerading. Enough of make-belief heroics: belief, accepting limits and conditions, that on them and out of them it may build the spiritual architectures of life, is heroism. Enough of play-acting: work is the true play. Moral imagination has found its home and its freedom in the real; and therewith the first epoch of his life rounds into completion, passes over its virtue to another, and in his life there is an ending and a beginning.
In what consists this complete beginning? In this, that he now gets his eye on himself in a wholly new way. He sees his being as a spiritual whole, a complete design in the thought of Eternal Nature, which design he is religiously bound to divine and serve. To serve Creative Reality even in the regards he bestows upon himself,—in coming to that aim and action, he, for the first time, beholds his being with a pure eye. "To say it in a word," he writes to Werner, "the cultivation of my individual self, here as I am, has, from my youth upward, been constantly, though dimly, my wish and purpose. The same intention I still cherish, but the means of realizing it are now grown somewhat clearer."[A]
"Selfish" is that? It is not the goal, but it is not selfish. Only as the sense of self is subordinated, only as it not only resigns dominion, but becomes a loyal steward in the household of the soul, happy in obedience, can one arrive at real self-culture,—that is, accept his being at the hands of Formative Nature as a design to be served. While self-feeling holds one in close grip, he can never so much as see his being in this pure, objective way, any more than he can look back into his own eyes. The very act of receiving it as the farm which he is to till,—as a spiritual whole, to which all parts, all partial acts and interests, and the sense of self among them, are to be subordinated and made serviceable,—this implies not merely a liberation from egoism, but much more, namely, utilization of it. Real self-culture consists in the happy and obedient service of uses in one's own spirit. The uses of the world, we have said, are enshrined in the spirit of man; when one can freely and faithfully serve these, his life as a whole human being has begun.
Self-culture, in the Goethean sense, is, then, a much nobler and more religious affair than the popular notion makes it. But even this, I repeat, is, in Goethe's view, simply the complete beginning. True, the usual notion is different. Some, that suppose themselves his followers, rest finally in self-culture; many, who think this the goal of Goethe's own life, inveigh against him accordingly. Did men, however, always wait to understand ere condemning, much virtuous indignation would never come to use. Precious is virtuous indignation; nevertheless, here there is for it no suitable occasion. Wilhelm goes on toward spiritual ripeness; we follow his advance.
The next step is symbolized by that charming episode, "Confessions of a Fair Saint," whose relation to the whole work many critics profess themselves unable to see,—indeed, I know not whether any critic has seen clearly what, nevertheless, is clearly there to be seen. Religion is flowering in Wilhelm's soul. He rests softly in Absolute Reality, in That which eternally, infinitely is. It is a deepening to infinitude of his feeling for the Real. From superficial, he comes to divine Reality, and finds this not only sufficing, but inspiring, not only commanding obedience, but blessing, exalting, crowning, making it royal.