was a more unfortunate formula invented than when, at a moment of reaction against his ascendancy, it occurred to some one to assert that Goethe had talent but not genius. No doubt the talent is there; perhaps no work in literature exhibits a mastery of so many literary styles as “Faust.” From the sublime lyric of the prologue, which astonished Shelley, we pass through scenes in which the problems of human character are dealt with, scenes in which the supernatural is brought surprisingly near to real life, scenes of humble life startlingly vivid, grotesque scenes of devilry, scenes of overwhelming pathos; then, in the second part, we find an incomparable revival of the Greek drama, and, at the close, a Dantesque vision of the Christian heaven. Such versatility in a single work is unrivalled; and the versatility of which Goethe’s writings, as a whole, gives evidence is much greater still. But to represent him, on this account, as a sort of mocking-bird, or ready imitator, is not merely unjust. Even if we give this representation a flattering turn, and describe him as a being almost superior to humanity, capable of entering fully into all that men think and feel, but holding himself independent of it all, such a being as is described (where, I suppose, Goethe is pointed at) in the Palace of Art, again, I say, it is not merely unjust. Not merely Goethe was not such a being, but we may express it more strongly and say: such a being is precisely what Goethe was not. He had, no doubt, a great power of entering into foreign literatures; he was, no doubt, indifferent to many controversies which in England, when we began to lead him, still raged hotly. But these were characteristic qualities, not of Goethe personally, but of Germany in the age of Goethe. A sort of cosmopolitan characterlessness marked the nation, so that Lessing could say in Goethe’s youth that the character of the Germans was to have no character. Goethe could not but share in the infirmity, but his peculiarity was that from the beginning he felt it as an infirmity, and struggled to overcome it. That unbounded intolerance, that readiness to allow everything and appreciate every one, which was so marked in the Germans of that time that it is clearly perceptible in their political history, and contributed to their humiliation by Napoleon, is just what is satirized in the delineation of Wilhelm Meister. Jarno says to Wilhelm, “I am glad to see you out of temper; it would be better still if you could be for once thoroughly angry.” This sentiment was often in Goethe’s mouth; so far was he from priding himself upon serene universal impartiality. Crabbe Robinson heard him say what an annoyance he felt it to appreciate everything equally and to be able to hate nothing. He flattered himself at that time that he had a real aversion. “I hate,” he said, “everything Oriental” (“Eigentlich hasse ich alles Orientalische”). He goes further in the “West-östlicher Divan,” where, in enumerating the qualities a poet ought to have, he lays it down as indispensable that he should hate many things (“Dann zuletzt ist unerlässlich dass der Dichter
manches hasse”). True, no doubt that he found it difficult to hate. An infinite good nature was born in him, and, besides this, he grew up in a society in which all established opinions had been shaken, so that for a rational man it was really difficult to determine what deserved hatred or love. What is wholly untrue in that view of him, which was so fashionable forty years ago – “I sit apart holding no form of creed, but contemplating all” – is that this tolerance was the intentional result of cold pride or self-sufficiency. He does not seem to me to have been either proud or unsympathetic, and among the many things of which he might boast, certainly he would not have included a want of definite opinions – he, who was never tired of rebuking the Germans for their vagueness, and who admired young Englishmen expressly because they seemed to know their own minds, even when they had little mind to know. Distinctness, character, is what he admires, what through life he struggles for, what he and Schiller alike chide the Germans for wanting. But he cannot attain it by a short cut. Narrowness is impossible to him, not only because his mind is large, but because the German public in their good-natured tolerance have made themselves familiar with such vast variety of ideas. He cannot be a John Bull, however much he may admire John Bull, because he does not live in an island. To have distinct views he must make a resolute act of choice, since all ideas have been laid before him, all are familiar to the society in which he lives. This perplexity, this difficulty of choosing what was good out of such a heap of opinions, he often expresses: “The people to be sure are not accustomed to what is best, but then they are so terribly well-read!”
33 But it is just the struggle he makes for distinctness that is admirable in him. The breadth, the tolerance, he has in common with his German contemporaries; what he has to himself is the resolute determination to arrive at clearness.
Nevertheless, he may seem indifferent even to those whose minds are less contracted than was the English mind half a century ago, for this reason, that his aim, though not less serious than that of others, is not quite the same. He seldom takes a side in the controversies of the time. You do not find him weighing the claims of Protestantism and Catholicism, nor following with eager interest the dispute between orthodoxy and rationalism. Again when all intellectual Germany is divided between the new philosophy of Kant and the old system, and later, when varieties show themselves in the new philosophy, when Fichte and Schelling succeed to the vogue of Kant, Goethe remains undisturbed by all these changes of opinion. He is almost as little affected by political controversy. The French Revolution irritates him, but not so much because it is opposed to his convictions as because it creates disturbance. Even the War of Liberation cannot rouse him. Was he not then a quietest? Did he not hold himself aloof, whether in a proud feeling of superiority or in mere Epicurean indifference, from all the interests and passions of humanity? If this were the case, or nearly the case, Goethe would have no claim to rank in the first class of literature. He might pass for a prodigy of literary expertness and versatility, but he would attract no lasting interest. Such quietism in a man upon whom the eyes of a whole nation were bent, could never be compared to the quietism of Shakspeare, who belonged to the uninfluential classes, and to whom no one looked for guidance.
But in truth the quietism of Goethe was the effect not of indifference or of selfishness, but of preoccupation. He had prescribed to himself in early life a task, and he declined to be drawn aside from it by the controversies of the time. It was a task worthy of the powers of the greatest man; it appeared to him, when he devoted himself to it, more useful and necessary than the special undertakings of theologian or philosopher. At the outset he might fairly claim to be the only earnest man in Germany, and might regard the partisans alike of Church and University as triflers in comparison with himself. The French Revolution changed the appearance of things. He could not deny that the political questions opened by that convulsion were of the greatest importance. But he was now forty years old, and the work of his life had begun so early, had been planned with so much care and prosecuted with so much method, that he was less able than many men might have been to make a new beginning at forty. Hence he was merely disturbed by the change which inspired so many others, and to the end of his life continued to look back upon the twenty odd years between the Seven Years’ War and the Revolution as a golden time, as in a peculiar sense his own time.34 The new events disturbed him in his habits without actually forcing him to form new habits; he found himself able, though with less comfort, to lead the same sort of life as before; and so he passed into the Napoleonic period and arrived in time at the year of liberation, 1813. Then, indeed, his quietism became shocking, and he felt it so himself; but it was now really too late to abandon a road on which he had travelled so long, and which he had honestly selected as the best.
What, then, was this task to which Goethe had so early devoted himself, and which seemed to him too important to be postponed even to the exigencies of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods? It was that task about which, since Goethe’s time, so much has been said – self-culture. “From my boyhood,” says Wilhelm, speaking evidently for Goethe himself, “it has been my wish and purpose to develop completely all that is in me.” Elsewhere he says, “to make my own existence harmonious.” Here is the refined form of selfishness of which Goethe has been so often accused. And undoubtedly the phrase is one which will bear a selfish interpretation, just as a Christian may be selfish when he devotes himself to the salvation of his soul. But in the one case, as in the other, it is before all things evident that the task undertaken is very serious, and that the man who undertakes it must be of a very serious disposition. When, as in Goethe’s case it is self-planned and self-imposed, such an undertaking is comparable to those great practical experiments in the conduct of life which were made by the early Greek philosophers. Right or wrong, such an
