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 1636.W13 
 
 Emerson and Goethe / 
 
 3 1924 021 996 800 
 
B Cornell University 
 
 W Library 
 
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 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021996800 
 
EMERSON 
 
 AND 
 
 GOETHE 
 
EMERSON AND GOETHE 
 
 FREDERICK B.'WAHR 
 
 A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements 
 
 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the 
 
 University of Michigan 
 
 GEORGE WAHR, Publisher 
 
 ANN ARBOR, MICH, 
 
COPYRIGHT 
 
 , I'RCDERICK B. WAIIR 
 
 19:5 
 
TO 
 
 PROFESSOR MAX WINKLER 
 
 SCHOLAR, TEACHER, AND 
 FRIEND 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Preface 9 
 
 Chaptek I. — Phases of the Romantic Revolt. ... 13 
 
 r. New England Transcendentalism. . 13 
 
 2. Goethe and German Romanticism. . 30 
 
 ChaptivK II. — Goethe in New England 38 
 
 Chapter III. — Emerson and Goethe 64 
 
 1. Emerson's Reading of Goethe 64 
 
 2. Emerson's Opinion of Goethe 80 
 
 3. The Individual Works 107 
 
 Chapter IV. — Critical Analysis 114 
 
 1. The Idealist and The Realist 114 
 
 2. The 'Misrepresentation of Goethe.. 149 
 
 Chapter V. — Conclusion 178 
 
 Appendix. — • 
 
 1. Notes 183 
 
 2. Bibliography 195 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 To the student of Emerson there Hes no Httle interest 
 in the study of his relation to those men and minds whose 
 works deeply impressed him and from whom his own 
 
 --T-1 _ r J. 
 
 P 
 
 P 
 
 P 
 
 P 
 
 P 
 
 P 
 
 P 
 
 P 
 
 'P 
 peared 
 
 15, 
 19, 
 ^i. 
 no, 
 165, 
 170. 
 176, 
 177, 
 186. 
 
 ERRATA: 
 
 8— read (1781) instead of (1871). 
 30 — read repetition instead of repition. 
 II — read 1814 instead of i8ig. 
 25-26 — read antinomy instead of antimony. 
 13 — read only instead of ony. 
 
 4 — read same instead of tame. 
 2g — read (10181) instead of (1081). 
 9 — read an instead of and. 
 ■note 30 — read which appeared instead of and ap- 
 
 Thomas in the Goethe Jahr Buch (Vol. 24), and by S. 
 H. Goodnight in the German-American Annals (May 
 1903). In so far as these gentlemen, particularly Pro- 
 fessor Thomas, first called attention to the subject as 
 worthy of larger study and themselves pointed out brief- 
 ly the salient facts, students must acknowledge a debt 
 of gratitude. But now the appearance of additional ma- 
 terial has thrown the whole matter into a larger per- 
 spective and is sufficient warrant for a new study. 
 
 For sources one turns to the statements of the Essays 
 and Correspondence, to which have been recently added 
 the Journals. These latter furnish in a sense a most 
 illuminating commentary upon the published product, for 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 To the student of Emerson there lies no little interest 
 in the study of his relation to those men and minds whose 
 works deeply impressed him and from whom his own 
 thought derived considerable comfort and substantiation. 
 These men were in a sense spiritual companions to him 
 throughout his life, and in our study of his regard for 
 their genius we gain clearer understanding, not so much 
 of this or that particular man, but far more of Emerson 
 himself. Indeed, Emerson as a critic is oftentimes the 
 best critic of Emerson. Thus in his divers comment on 
 Goethe we find at once sympathetic insight and admira- 
 tion interspersed with unhappy misunderstanding, cen- 
 sure, and condemnation, and though we do not always 
 meet the real Goethe, we are always confronted with the 
 real Emerson. 
 
 It is the aim, then, of this dissertation to treat of 
 Emerson's critical opinion of Goethe. This has been 
 done before, but with no exhaustive intent, by Calvin 
 Thomas in the Goethe Jahr Buch (Vol. 24), and by S. 
 H. Goodnight in the German-American Annals (May 
 1903). In so far as these gentlemen, particularly Pro- 
 fessor Thomas, first called attention to the subject as 
 worthy of larger study and themselves pointed out brief- 
 ly the salient facts, students must acknowledge a debt 
 of gratitude. But now the appearance of additional ma- 
 terial has thrown the whole matter into a larger per- 
 spective and is sufficient warrant for a new study. 
 
 For sources one turns to the statements of the Essays 
 and Correspondence, to which have been recently added 
 the Journals. These latter furnish in a sense a most 
 illuminating commentary upon the published product, for 
 
lO EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 in them Emerson's thought found expression in its grow- 
 ing moments, before it was deftly molded and weighed 
 for public utterance. In this respect they throw new 
 and larger light upon his reading and critical opinion of 
 Goethe. Moreover, other investigations have enabled us 
 to consider Emerson's statements in their historical re- 
 lations ; and our aim shall be, then, not to isolate the 
 facts, but to treat them in their relation to the critical 
 temper of that movement of which Emerson was spokes- 
 man, New England Transcendentalism, and thus to 
 touch upon those forces which conditioned his judgment. 
 Time and place must be considered, as must the general 
 relation of the larger to the smaller thought-environ- 
 ment. To this end the relation of the New England 
 Transcendental Movement to the larger Romantic Renais- 
 sance in Europe will be sketched, and the resultant read- 
 ing and criticism of Goethe in the new world. 
 
 Again, Emerson's statements on Goethe have had 
 such large and marked influence upon the general atti- 
 tude of the American public toward the German poet 
 that much of the misconception and prejudice which has 
 characterized this criticism on the whole may be laid 
 directly at his door. For in Emerson and in most of his 
 contemporaries we shall note a constant feeling of in- 
 decision and uncertainty in their estimate of Goethe. We 
 shall find on the one hand unbounded admiration and 
 emulation of the German poet's profound wisdom and 
 ability, whereas on the other hand we shall find them 
 bitterly attacking him as a man and artist. None or few 
 of them were able to sense the deeper 'unity of his life 
 and work; they were attracted to the sage, but repelled 
 by the artist, and on the whole they failed to understand 
 the synthesis between art and life and its importance 
 in the Goethean philosophy. Thus we shall meet with a 
 misrepresentation of Goethe which still exercises a large 
 influence in America. If the present study may help to- 
 
PRKFACE. 1 1 
 
 ward clearing up much of this prevalent misunderstand- 
 ing and prejudice, and aid in bringing about a better 
 appreciation of Emerson's attitude — and thereby of 
 Goethe — its purpose will have been in part attained. 
 
 The aim of .this dissertation, we may repeat, is to 
 determine as accurately as possible Emerson's critical 
 attitude toward Goethe, to explain both from the point- 
 of-view of individual character and from that of his- 
 torical environment how and why he arrived at his con- 
 clusions, to evaluate them historically and critically, and 
 thus seek to understand, in so far as we can, the justifi- 
 cation and limitation of his critical opinion of the greatest 
 of German poets. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 PHASES OF THE ROMANTIC REVOLT. 
 
 I. New England Transcendentalism. 
 
 The Transcendental Movement in New England was 
 at the same time a religious, a philosophical, and a literary 
 Renaissance. Fundamentally religious, it marks at once 
 the culmination of and revolt against the orthodox Uni- 
 tarian doctrine of the time, a supplanting of intellect by 
 intuition and of the church by the soul as the criterion of 
 religious truth. Philosophically it lifts itself from the 
 sensualism of Locke and the English empiricists to the 
 idealism of Kant and the German Romanticists, holding 
 firmly to the conviction, as Alcott put it, "that there is 
 more in the mind than enters it through the senses." In 
 the field of literature it is given finest expression in the 
 prose and poetry of Emerson and his circle. A turning- 
 inward of the mind upon itself to discover the source and 
 essence of all life, a search for the permanent in the 
 constantly changing flux of things, and a rediscovery of 
 the time-old truths of being, now cast into the mould of 
 Puritan New England, brought forth little that was new 
 but all that was vital, and in this lies the significance of 
 the Movement in the history of thought. Ten years of 
 enthusiastic activity, roughly speaking from 1833 to 
 1845, in and about Boston, point off its period of greatest 
 productivity, though its influence is still felt even in the 
 every-day walks of American life, and its origins go 
 back beyond the beginning of the century on both sides 
 of the water. 
 
14 EMBRSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 Many forces were at work in New England which 
 helped prepare the way for the acceptance of the Trans- 
 cendental doctrine and contributed to its development, 
 and the general situation has much in common with the 
 whole nature of life and thought before the outbreak of 
 the Romantic Revolt in Europe. Indeed, one might 
 characterize the American situation as a miniature repro- 
 duction of the European movement under the influence 
 of other conditions and in another environment. The 
 eighteenth century in Europe was a period of transition, 
 and as such one of criticism, materialism, and scepticism 
 in life and thought. Every man seemed a reflection of a 
 little world playing in a divine scheme of pre-established 
 harmony. Life was aristocratic, artificial, formalistic, 
 cosmopolitan, rationalistic. Sensation was looked upon 
 as the primary and reflection as the secondary source of 
 all knowledge. "The last resort a man has recourse to 
 in the conduct of himself," said. Locke, "is the under- 
 standing." The sphere of the mind was limited to the 
 bounds of human experience,' which were the barriers of 
 sense. Whatever transcended or broke beyond was 
 mockery; there was neither room for flight, nor space 
 for fall. Man kept close to the earth and to the things 
 of his immediate sense-perception. Religion in the main 
 fell into the abstract petrifactions of theology; art be- 
 came largely formalistic and didactic, a mere matter of 
 dogma and rule; and poetry, degraded and ornamental, 
 became in Emerson's words "fit to put around frosted 
 cake." (Wks. V, p. 255). The method of thought was 
 self-analysis and the inevitable consequence scepticism. 
 There was a tranquillity and evenness of temper, a pallor, 
 a seeming indifference, almost monotony to this world. 
 It lacked the lightning-torch of inspiration, and it wasted 
 itself in its own criticism. The sensualism of Locke had 
 led the thinking world to the brink of an abyss, where 
 Hume, mercilessly pointing into the depths, startled it 
 
NEW ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM. 1 5 
 
 to the quick. Was all man's knowledge, his faith and 
 hope, merely an aggregate of disconnected sense-im- 
 pressions? The rationalist found himself a hopeless 
 prisoner fettered in the limited vision of his own thought, 
 and the voice of nature and that of the emotions were 
 loudly claiming to be heard. Kant was aroused to his 
 giant laboi^^and the first Critique, that of the Pure 
 Reason (iSgi), was the result, ushering in a new era 
 and heralding the rebirth of the Spirit. 
 
 Doubtless it was chiefly the scepticism- and consequent 
 positivism of Hume that awoke Kant to action, as it was 
 the naturalism of Rousseau that prepared the way for 
 the return to nature and the social upheaval of the French 
 Revolution. The latter half of the eighteenth century 
 marked the rediscovery of passion. The age of rational- 
 ism with its pale emotional accompaniment, sentimental- 
 ism, exhausted itself, and in its place was hurled the 
 torch of emotional enthusiasm, individual power, and 
 spiritual emancipation. The German emotional outburst, 
 the Storm and Stress of the sixties and seventies, sup- 
 ported by the new critical views of a Hamann and a 
 Herder, preceded the publication of Kant's Critique by 
 practically a decade. In Rousseau it found the apostle of a 
 new view of nature, in Shakespeare a new form of dra- 
 matic art, in Herder a new and historical method of 
 criticism, and towering up heavenwards in the hazy back- 
 ground loomed the splendid spires of medieval Gothicism, 
 at once a revelation of past glory and an inspiration to 
 new endeavor. But the Storm and Stress was, after all, 
 a literary rather than a philosophical movement and pro- 
 phetic of what was to come. The Spirit ready for flight 
 awaited assurance of ethereal heights; philosophy had as 
 yet broken through no pathway for it. The movement 
 remained essentially realistic. Its poets gloried in the 
 emotions, in the mystery which the Enlightenment had 
 repudiated, but they did not seek to penetrate this mys- 
 
l6 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 tery in order to understand it. They were satisfied to 
 sense and to feel it and did not believe that knowledge 
 could add a new glory. "Gefiihl ist alles." The En- 
 lightenment had analyzed; the Storm and Stress pre- 
 ferred merely to experience and to live to the full. A 
 new synthesis was to be the work of the Romanticists. 
 Hamann and Herder, anticipating as they did the aes- 
 thetic idealism of Schelling, remained with Hume and 
 the empiricists deriders of the very Reason, which Kant 
 was to lay as the corner-stone of the Romantic philosophy. 
 Locke, looking inwardly and outwardly, had found an 
 insurmountable bulwark in sense; Kant, looking inward- 
 ly to the Transcendental-ego and outwardly to the thing- 
 in-itself, found both equally unknowable, and therefore 
 turning to the human will he discovered a basis for the 
 moral world and the Divinity in the practical life. Locke 
 had called his epoch-making work an "Essay on Human 
 Understanding," and Kant termed his Critique that of 
 "Pure Reason;" and herein lay a distinction of great 
 import. Kant re-established the Reason as the basis of 
 knowledge and upon this the philosophy of Romanticism 
 builded. This distinction, too, was the one made by 
 Coleridge and aroused the world of English thought. 
 Going forth from Kant, Fichte with the intense sub- 
 jectivity of his nature developed his ethical idealism, and 
 Schelling with the sense of the artist constructed his sys- 
 tem of aesthetic idealism. For Kant the absolute was in 
 its essence unknowable; for Fichte nature was a product 
 of our self-consciousness, the basis of which is moral; 
 for Schelling and the Romanticists it was Spirit in the 
 process of evolution, attaining the highest-known form 
 of expression in human self-consciousness, and regard- 
 ing the outward and the inward as different stages of 
 one and the same creative power, which, vital in all 
 things, was known as God or Weltseele. This unknown 
 but all-pervading mysterious something it was, that the 
 
NEW ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM. 1 7 
 
 Romanticists sought to determine in their criticism and 
 philosophy and to express in their own Uterkry effort. 
 Their critics studied its workings in the history and lit- 
 erature of past ages and distant lands and found it ever 
 expressive, conditioned by circumstance and colored by 
 temperament. Their poets intuited its mystery, investi- 
 gated its strange secrets, and hailed it as the essence of 
 all life. 
 
 The Romantic Revolt then, was, briefly, the culmin- 
 ation of a century of rationalism and the consequent re- 
 action — a reassertion of the rights of the Spirit and the 
 emotions along with those of the mind. It was not 
 merely an outburst of emotional enthusiasm, a glorifica- 
 tion of youthful power and vigor, but rather a thoughtful 
 consideration of life as viewed through the vista of the 
 Spirit. Idealism supplanted materialism, scepticism 
 yielded to optimism, the artificial gave way to the na- 
 tural, and the former vague cosmopolitanism became en- 
 riched and individualized by a growing sense of national- 
 ism. The emotions were rediscovered, the Spirit freed, 
 the imagination emancipated, and the result was a great 
 and far-reaching outburst of poetry, especially of a 
 lyric note. 
 
 Now the American phase of this revolt lagged half 
 a century behind the outburst in Europe, though it gave 
 echo to the same spirit of unrest and passion. Its 
 progress was in the main independent, for when it began 
 its struggles those in Europe had come to an end, though 
 the influence from abroad came to give it fresh impetus 
 and encouragement and to help direct its course. In 
 €ach case we have an inevitable reaction, distinguished 
 "by enthusiastic activity, a reaction which is the outcome 
 of a period of lethargy and decline; yet, however alike 
 the two movements may appear in general aim, funda- 
 mentally they were distinct. The struggle in New Eng- 
 land was essentially religious as was the temper of New 
 
1 8 emf;rson and goethb. 
 
 England culture : the European movement was in essence 
 philosophical and literary, though not without its social 
 interests. The leaders of New England thought were 
 almost entirely "enlightened" members of the clergy. 
 They emphasized the ethical values, inquiring as to the 
 how of life, whereas the German leaders were pre- 
 eminently metaphysical, inquiring into the what of life. 
 
 We have found that the eighteenth century by ex- 
 hausting the rational side of human natuie rediscovered 
 the emotional. Such too was the case in New England. 
 The Calvinistic theology of the fathers, subjected here and 
 there to the critical cunning of stray bits of English ra- 
 tionalism and free thought, offered many a weak spot to 
 the sceptical mind. Heresies crept into the Calvinistic 
 stronghold; Arminianism questioned the doctrine of Elec- 
 tion; Arianism attacked the doctrine of the Trinity; and 
 all the efforts of Jonathan Edwards, invincible as he 
 seemed, resulted only in a closer consolidation of the 
 liberal element, for Jonathan Edwards, though prophetic 
 in his idealistic and mystic bent of mind, was on the 
 whole reactionary in theological argument. Though the 
 new views, termed Unitarian, could be ostracised, they 
 could not be suppressed, for the time was ripe for 
 their growth. 
 
 Unitarianism it was, which coincided with the gen- 
 eral temper of European thought in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, and it was the very nature of Unitarianism — as it 
 had been the nature of the 'Enlightenment — to prepare 
 the way for the Transcendental Revolt and make its de- 
 velopment a certainty. The Movement began about 1785 in 
 this country, and was indeed typical of the critical cen- 
 tury in which it appeared. In origin a reaction against 
 Calvinism, it itself soon became conservative and formaU 
 striving to give permanence to what was in its very 
 essence but a passing phase. Philosophically its masters 
 were Locke and the English empiricists ; Paley's "Natural 
 
NBW ENGIvAND TRANSCI;nDUNTALISM. 19- 
 
 Theology," "Evidences of Christianity," and "Moral 
 Philosophy" were text-books in Harvard College, and 
 were accepted as authorities in the fields of morals and 
 theology. A radical step was taken when Hume's Essay 
 on the Understanding was introduced. The typical Uni- 
 tarian was a man of culture and tolerance, intellectual, 
 moral, a good citizen, a conservative in politics, and a 
 staunch defender of his faith. What he lacked was the 
 spark of divine fire, enthusiasm, emotional depth — in 
 Channing's words, "life and feeling." He had but little 
 interest in metaphysics ; he was satisfied with the surface, 
 with sense, and was repulsed by the mystery beyond. Tied 
 to a world of matters-of-fact, his spirit sought in vain, 
 for flight in the complex structure of theological dogma. 
 James Freeman Clarke has ably characterized the temper 
 of the times for us^ ; "In theology a certain literalism pre- 
 vailed, and. the doctrines of Christianity were, inferred 
 from counting and weighing texts on either side. Not the- 
 higher reason, with its intuition of eternal ideas, but the 
 analytic understanding, with its logical methods, was con- 
 sidered to be the ruler in the realm of thought. There 
 was more of culture than of original thought, more of 
 trained excellence of character than of moral enthusiasm. 
 Religion was believed to consist in holding rational or 
 orthodox opinions, going regularly to church, and listen- 
 ing every Sunday to a certain number of prayers, hymns, 
 
 and sermons There was an unwritten creed of 
 
 morals, literature, and social thought, to which all were 
 expected to conform. There was little originality and 
 much repition. On all subjects there were certain for- 
 mulas which it was considered proper to repeat 
 
 In those days, if I remember them aright, it was regarded 
 a kind of duty to think as every one else thought, a sort 
 of delinquency or weakness to differ from the majority."' 
 The reaction came with the gradual influx of the newi 
 thought frorn Europe, especially of German idealism; 
 
20 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 through English channels. Yet, as abroad so here it was 
 to a certain extent a natural process, life in all its inten- 
 sity reasserting itself, emotion claiming its due place by 
 the side of reason, and spirit demanding its right of sense. 
 William Ellery Channing (1780- 1842) stands out, we may 
 say, as the Herder of the new awakening. He contained 
 in himself the best of the old and the best of the new 
 manner of thought, yet in all strictness he can be claimed 
 by neither, though one would fain class him as a Trans- 
 cendentalist. He was a man of cultured and conserva- 
 tive tastes, but withal a man of life and feeling, of emo- 
 tional depth, and of speculative interest. "Our Bishop" 
 the Transcendentalists called him, thereby gratefully ac- 
 knowledging his active sympathy and Interest in their 
 efforts. 
 
 Channing's famous sermon on "Unitarian Christian- 
 ity," preached at the ordination of Jared Sparks at Balti- 
 more in 1819, marks one of the critical moments in re- 
 ligious controversy in this country and sounds the first 
 trumpet-call of the Transcendental Revolt. A comparison 
 with Emerson's Divinity Address, delivered just nineteen 
 years later, shows how Transcendentalism had grown out 
 and away from Unitarianism, how it had ceased to be a 
 theological way of looking at things and had become more 
 purely spiritual. The Divinity Address marks a later 
 stage in the Revolt, or better, the Revolt at the height of 
 power and activity. In the nineteen intervening years 
 much had taken place in New England, and many new 
 influences had left their impress upon the mould of 
 thought. These had been nineteen years of activity and 
 growth, and they form a distinct contrast to the lethargic 
 temper of the preceding Unitarian spirit. Chief among 
 these influences were the circulation of Wordswortli's 
 poetry, the works of Coleridge, the essays of Carlyle, and 
 the eager interest in German idealistic speculation and 
 
NiJW ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM. 21 
 
 Romantic thought — above all the reading and study of 
 Goethe. 
 
 Just when the "new views" first made their way across 
 the water is hard to determine, though one can feel quite 
 sure that their influence was slight or scarcely perceptible 
 before the middle of the second decade of the century. 
 Doubtless the first acquaintance with the Romantic phil- 
 osophy and literature of Germany was made through 
 Mme. de Stael's celebrated work, "De I'Allemagne," first 
 published and translated into English in 1813; a criticism 
 of this work appeared in the Edinburgh Review in 1819, 
 and was restated in the same year in the Analectic Maga- 
 zine (Phila.) and the Quarterly Review (N. Y.). Then 
 the return home of the young Americans, Ticknor, Ever- 
 ett, Bancroft, Dwight, and others, from study at Got- 
 tingen and other German universities, bringing with them 
 an enthusiasm for German educational methods and schol- 
 arship, and their subsequent articles on German art and 
 thought, which appeared in contemporary magazines, 
 were of great influence and weight in awakening an in- 
 terest in this direction. An impulse to the study of Ger- 
 man and a testimonial to the interest in the language was 
 given by the appointment of Dr. Charles Follen, a Ger- 
 man refugee, as teacher of the language in Harvard Col- 
 lege in the fall of 1825, and his later appointment to a 
 professorship in 1830. Reviews of German works, crit- 
 ical and literary, and stray bits of translation continued 
 to appear with much greater frequency in the magazines, 
 and in view of the fact that the Transcendentalists eager- 
 ly greeted each contribution to the new philosophy and 
 looked abroad for support and encouragement, the ortho- 
 dox party began to regard Germany and German writings 
 as hot-beds of doubt and dissension, full of contamina- 
 tion, moral laxity, and godlessness. Needless to say, the 
 word German came to carry with it all sorts of ridiculous 
 and extravagant notions. The conservative Unitarian 
 
22 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 held up his hands in horror at the mere mention of Ger- 
 man theological, philosophical, or literary teaching. We 
 find Dr. Channing, herald of the new era as he was, cau- 
 tiously counselling William Emerson in 1823 to study at 
 Cambridge rather than Gottingen, "believing that. ..... 
 
 the best education for a minister in New England, taking 
 into account the moral influence and religious feeling, can 
 be obtained at Cambridge"-; and in the Christian Review 
 as late as 1836, ten pages are given up to the discussion 
 of the question — "What are the dangers and benefits in- 
 cident to a minister from the study of the Gei^man lan- 
 guage?" But notwithstanding all these warnings the in- 
 terest in German continued to increase rapidly. New 
 England suffered, as Theodore Parker ironically put it; a 
 veritable "German epidemic" which infested all classes 
 and caused undue alarm and worry. There were many 
 stern, unyielding antagonists and there were hosts of 
 eager students and ready champions. Among the various 
 articles those of George Ripley in the Christian Review, 
 especially on Herder in 1835, and on Schleiermacher in 
 the following year, did much to dispel the notion that 
 German philosophy and theology were irreligious. 
 
 The most important channels for conveying the spirit 
 of German idealism to the English-speaking world and 
 thus to New England were, however, the writings of 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle, and their 
 influence was immeasurable. To them and to Words- 
 worth the Transcendentalists were probably most in- 
 debted, and it was to their writings that they looked for 
 encouragement and moral support. Channing found in 
 Coleridge and Wordsworth a higher form of thought than 
 either the Trinitarian or the Unitarian, and the "S'artor 
 Resartus" took him completely by storm, "not as giving 
 him new ideas but as a quickener of all his ideas. "^ And 
 Emerson in 1840 wrote of Wordsworth's influence : "We 
 saw the stars shine, we felt the awe of mouiitains, we 
 
NEW ENGI,AND TRANSCENDENTAIvISM. 23 
 
 heard the rustle of the wind in the grass, and knew 
 
 again the ineffable secret of solitude Here M|as no 
 
 poem, here was poetry The human soul in these 
 
 last ages striving for a just publication of itself 
 
 more than any other contemporary bard, he is pervaded 
 with a reverence of somewhat higher than (conscious) 
 
 thought a wisdom of humanity." (Wks. XII, p. 
 
 320). A deep love for the soul of nature, an interest in 
 the minor aspects of common life and a new poetic dic- 
 tion were the gifts of Wordsworth to Transcendentalism, 
 and his influence upon the contemporary poets was by 
 no means inconsiderable. 
 
 Coleridge furnished more directly an impetus to new 
 philosophical speculation and was the means of introduc- 
 ing the results of the German metaphysicians to New 
 England. His works evidently aroused but Httle interest 
 imtil the republication of the "Aids to Reflection" in 1829, 
 with a scholarly introduction by James Marsh, President 
 of Vermont University, in which attention was called to 
 the spiritual depth of the idealistic philosophy and the 
 distinction between the Reason and the Understanding 
 was emphasized. Alcott writes : "The perusal of the 
 'Aids to Reflection,' 'The Friend,' and the 'Biographia 
 Literaria,' at this time (1833) gave my mind a turn to- 
 ward the. spiritual. I was led deeper to seek the grounds 
 even of experience, and found the elements of human con- 
 sciousness not in the impressions of external nature, but 
 in the spontaneous life of the spirit itself, independent of 
 experience in space and time."'' In 1829 Emerson notes 
 in his Journal (J. II, p. 277) : "I am reading Coleridge's 
 'Friend' with great interest, he has a tone a little lower 
 than greatness — but what a living soul, what universal 
 
 knowledge! there are few or no books of pure 
 
 literature so self-imprinting, that is so often remembered 
 
 as Coleridge's it is only one more instance of what 
 
 is always interesting, the restless human soul bursting 
 
24 KMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 the narrow boundaries of antique speculation and mad 
 to knQw the secrets of that unknown world, on whose 
 brink it is sure it is standing." Perhaps it is James 
 Freeman Clarke who states Coleridge's influence best of 
 all in his autobiography': "Coleridge, the philosopher, 
 confirmed my longing for a higher philosophy than that 
 of John Locke and David Hartley, the metaphysicians 
 most in vogue with the earlier Unitarians down to the 
 
 time of Channing Coleridge showed me from 
 
 Kant that though knowledge begins with experience it 
 does not come from experience. Then I discovered that 
 I was a born Transcendentalist." Coleridge, then, eman- 
 cipated the Spirit, and to him as a liberator the Transcen- 
 dentalists owed very much. In fact Margaret Fuller 
 characterized the benefits which his writings conferred 
 upon the age "as yet incalculable." By his eflforts chiefly the 
 philosophy of German Romanticism — notably the moral 
 inspiration of Fichte and the metaphysical speculation of 
 Schelling — found large following in New England, and 
 it was for this reason indubitably that the philosophy of 
 Transcendentalism in its broad outlines stood nearer to 
 these men than to any other of the German idealists. 
 Frederick Henry Hedge, in an article in the Christian Ex- 
 aminer for March, 1833, warmly commended the new 
 philosophical views and thus helped give them a wider 
 acquaintance in New England. But one must remember 
 that such knowledge thus obtained was knowledge at sec- 
 ond hand, for Coleridge left his own touch upon what- 
 ever passed through his intellectual and artistic work- 
 shop. 
 
 Carlyle's great essays on German literature and liter- 
 ary men appeared in the magazines dvu-ing the years 
 1827-28, and opened to his countrymen and to America 
 a new world of thought and life. His activity as a cul- 
 tural force reminds one strongly of Fichte; both empha- 
 size the moral-will in man and stress the 'doctrine of 
 
NSW ENGIvAND TRANSCENDENTALISM. 25 
 
 Work. Yet Carlyle's importance for us lies chiefly in 
 his position as an admirer, defender, and apostle of 
 Goethe, and hence we shall treat him at greater length 
 ],ater. Of his influence, on the whole, J. F. Clarke writes" : 
 
 ■' the voice of Carlyle — a man who could come face 
 
 to face with Truth Endowed with a high degree 
 
 of the intuitive faculty, — a born seer, a prophet, seeing 
 
 the great realities of the universe with open vision 
 
 He taught us to look at realities instead of names — to 
 see God in the world, in nature, in life, in providence, in 
 
 man Faith was once more possible he did 
 
 not seem to be giving us a new creed, so much as inspir- 
 ing us with a new life." His enthusiasm for German 
 literature kindled an unbounded interest in the subject, 
 as Clarke attests : "We knew other young men and young 
 women who taught themselves German in order to read 
 for themselves the authors made so luminous by this 
 writer." His translations and original writings remained 
 among the most potent forces of the Transcendental 
 Movement.'^ Emerson as early as 1832, before the be- 
 ginning of their long friendship, termed him "my Ger- 
 manick new-light writer," and said of him, "he gives us 
 confidence in our principles." (J. H, p. 515). 
 
 But there were other agents active in New England 
 in affording a larger acquaintance with the spirit of the 
 european revolt and in interpreting the meaning of the 
 new idealistic philosophy. Not only was it through Eng- 
 lish channels that these views became disseminated but 
 also through French. Though few people could read 
 German well, many could read French, and the results of 
 French speculation were reviewed and reported. From 
 1834-38 the eclectic philosophical treatises of Cousin were 
 translated and widely circulated and reviewed, in partic- 
 ular the "Introduction to Philosophy," translated by Prof. 
 C. Henry, and the "Comparative View of Different Phil- 
 osophical Systems." In 1838-42 the pubHcation of George 
 
36 BMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 Ripley's "Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature" in 
 fourteen attractive volumes, brought many readers into 
 better acquaintance with the new teaching. The "Phil- 
 osophical Miscellanies," as the opening volumes were 
 called, gave a careful and critical introduction and analysis 
 to the works of Cousin, Jouffroy, and Constant, and with 
 the many well-chosen excei'pts in this collection gave a 
 .good illustration of the trend of French idealistic thought. 
 In the eighth and ninth volumes W. H. Channing gave 
 his version of Joufifroy's "Introduction to Ethics ;" and 
 the other volumes were devoted more especially to the 
 German writers, as the third, in which John S. Dwight 
 presented translations from the lyric verse of Goethe and 
 Schiller with an elaborate and critical preface ; the fourth, 
 containing Margaret Fuller's translation of Eckermann's 
 "Gesprache mit Goethe ;" the fifth, the sixth, and seventh, 
 .giving C. C. Felton's translation of Menzel's History of 
 German Literature; the tenth and eleventh, DeWette's 
 Theodore, by J. F. Clarke; the twelfth and thirteenth, 
 DeWette's Ethics, by Samuel Osgood ; and the fourteenth 
 and last, a selection of German lyrics by Charles T. 
 Brooks. These volumes had a marked influence upon the 
 ■educated reading-public. 
 
 Thus we see by the time of the appearance of Emer- 
 son's "Nature" in 1836, called the "first document" of 
 the Transcendental group, the results of the old world 
 revolt had not only penetrated into the new, but were 
 widely disseminated and eagerly read. German was being 
 studied by the leaders of intellectual culture to obtain a 
 more intimate acquaintance 'with the sources of idealistic 
 thought and literature. In Coleridge more especially, 
 New England found an introduction to the Romantic 
 philosophy and thus was better prepared to develop its 
 liberalism from a dialectic basis ; in Carlyle was found an 
 introduction more particularly to the Romantic litera- 
 
NEW ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTALISM. 27 
 
 ture which he interpreted in terms of his moral ideahsm. 
 New England itself furnished the puritanic soil in which 
 the new seeds were to take root and spring forth. 
 
 The new era, in America as in Europe, was, then, a 
 revolt directed against the old and established conven- 
 tions in life and thought. It remains now to distinguish 
 briefly between the characteristic nature of the reaction 
 as it found expression amongst different peoples and on 
 different soil. The Romantic Movement in Europe makes 
 its presence felt at some time in almost all reading and 
 thinking nations, its influence spreading from one to the 
 other. Thus it appears in England, in France, and in 
 Germany, in three distinct revivals, each characteristic of 
 its own time and place, yet all more or less intimately re- 
 lated in basic tendency. The English Romanticists, start- 
 ing out independently, soon influenced and were in turn 
 influenced to some extent by the writers of the German 
 Storm and Stress, and again their influence upon the ro- 
 mancers and poets of the later German Romantic School 
 was in no wise insignificant. The French revolt appear- 
 ing upon the scene later under the stormy leadership of 
 A'ictor Hugo was in turn profoundly influenced by both 
 the English and German writers and thinkers. The work 
 of Alme. deStael was of greatest service in its interpreta- 
 tion of the German philosophical and literary thought to 
 the other nations. English and French Romanticism 
 were essentially literary movements; Gei-man Romanti- 
 cism was especially significant in its critical and philoso- 
 phical rather than in its purely literary product. Ameri- 
 can Romanticism, or Transcendentalism, remained true 
 to the temper of New England. In its beginnings in- 
 dependent and religious, it was soon flooded, as we have 
 seen, by the "new views" from Europe, and became in 
 general more philosophical ; yet, however erratic its flight, 
 it was always "Romanticism on Puritan ground." It sub- 
 
28 EMJJRSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 stituted more especially philosophical for theological 
 tenets in religion, and like Coleridge it stood closer to 
 Kant in its doctrine than to any other of the later Roman- 
 tic thinkers.^ 
 
 No words better illustrate the spirit that prompted the 
 New England thinkers to break away from all the ac- 
 cepted norms of thought than the opening of Emerson's 
 "Nature" (1836) : "Our age is retrospective. It builds 
 the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, his- 
 tories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld 
 God and nature face to face ; we, through their eyes. 
 Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the 
 universe? Why should not we have a poetry and phil- 
 osophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by 
 revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Em- 
 bosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life 
 stream around and through us, and invite us by the 
 powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why 
 should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put 
 the living generation into masquerade out of its faded 
 wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more 
 wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new 
 men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and 
 laws and worship." 
 
 The Transcendentalist was an individual trusting 
 above all in the intuitions of his soul, which to him was 
 a part of the Divine Nature. He was a devotee of soli- 
 tude and of nature, a child of the present, to whom t'ie 
 immediate moment contained in the mind the meaning 
 of all past and future experience. He was an apostle of 
 self-culture, of the expansion of the individual soul in its 
 largest manifestations and a lover of the good, the true, 
 and the beautiful. 
 
 The Transcendental period, like all other periods of 
 its kind, was distinguished by an iriterest in the specula- 
 tions and literatures of all ages and peoples. Not posses- 
 
NEW ENGLAND TRANSCENDENTAUSM. 29 
 
 sing a systematic philosophy itself, it asserted primarily 
 the divinity of man, and assimilated to itself the ideal- 
 istic teachings of eastern and western thought. What- 
 ever could give strength and faith to its following, who- 
 ever taught the reality of the Spirit and the fallibility of 
 sense was its master. Except in one or two instances, 
 the Transcendentalists were not scholars. They com- 
 muned with the Spirit as it had found expression through 
 the great minds of all past ages and lands, and they treas- 
 ured in the poet or philosopher what they themselves 
 were quietly evolving in their own minds, what to them 
 was a confirmation of their own budding thought. They 
 yielded to the charm of Plato, of Swedenborg, of Goethe, 
 not unconditionally, but always in so far only as the light 
 of their own vision would permit. All else they either 
 dismissed or denounced. 
 
 The center of the Transcendental activity was in and 
 about Boston. A journal, the "Dial," chiefly critical, by 
 which they hoped to explain and propagate their teach- 
 ings, was the outgrowth of their efforts. They held meet- 
 ings for the discussion of the new views and formed the 
 "Transcendental Club," but the members soon scattered, 
 and with the extinction of the Dial in 1844 active in- 
 terest in the Movement as such may be said to have 
 ceased. On the whole, Transcendentalism was never a 
 popular movement; the tendencies of the time were 
 rather in the direction of practical reform, and though 
 the Transcendentalists, as we know, were not indifferent 
 to such issues, they were, rather reformers in things of 
 the Spirit and thereby of the practical sidt of life. Th'o- 
 reau was a typical Transcendental reformer ; one who, in 
 Emerson's words, felt himself called upon "to renounce 
 everything which is not true to him and put all his prac- 
 tices back on their first thoughts, and do nothing for 
 which he had not the whole world for his reason." (Wks. 
 I, p. 248). 
 
30 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 I — 2. Goethe and German Romanticism. 
 
 One of the most potent influences of the German Ro- 
 mantic revolt was that exerted by the poet Goethe. He 
 it was to whom the German Romanticists looked for spir- 
 itual guidance and encouragement. Him they acclaimed 
 as the greatest personality and poet of his time ; his favor 
 they courted ; for in him was incorporated as in none 
 other the genius and wisdom of his age. Of all German 
 writers he was the most widely read, the best-known, and 
 the most-discussed among the New England Transcen- 
 dentalists. Of him they were most generous in praise 
 and most cruel in censure, and in their criticism of him 
 they revealed most intimately the strength and weakness 
 of their own views and convictions. In order to read his 
 works they studied German, and his name became one to 
 conjure with in New England. 
 
 But what, we ask, was Goethe's position in the gen- 
 eral Romantic revolt? In how far was he in accord with 
 the ideas of the Romanticists, and to what extent did he 
 differ from them in temper and aim? What was their re- 
 lation to and opinion of him? 
 
 In him, it has been said, the German eighte'enth cen- 
 tury was completed and summed up, while the nineteenth 
 was almost in its every aspect reflected or foretold. He 
 was one of the Hterary leaders of that first outburst of 
 emotionalism on German soil which we have discussed as 
 the Storm and Stress movement. He was its poet as 
 Herder was its prophet, but this movement in its exuber- 
 ance of passion and energy was comparatively short- 
 lived, though its influence was far-reaching and rich in 
 result. The later Romantic School, under the leadership 
 of the brothers Schlegel, was, as we have seen, secured in 
 its position by a distinct philosophical evolution. Its 
 leaders were men permeated with the new philosophy 
 and very much interested in aesthetic speculation, and 
 
GOETHE AND GERMAN ROMANTICISM. 3I 
 
 they sought to understand with greater definiteness what 
 the Storm and Stress had been content merely to experi- 
 ence. In the interval the Critical Philosophy had come 
 to bring clarity and stability, and the Romanticists were 
 quick to take advantage of its teaching and to go forth 
 from it strongly re-enforced. Goethe, however, remained 
 largely independent of this philosophical movement; he 
 was not much given to metaphysical speculation and as an 
 artist preferred study in the concrete to that in the 
 abstract. His manner of looking upon life remained 
 thoroughly objective; he observed the phenomena of 
 nature as such, as a scientist and artist, and therefrom 
 deduced his conclusions. He was content to revere the 
 realm of the unknown which lay out and beyond the 
 boundaries, of sense, but was loath to investigate and seek 
 to analyze it, for such speculation, he thought, tended 
 nowhere. "Das schonste Gliick des denkenden Menschen 
 ist, das Erforschliche erforscht zu haben und das Uner- 
 forschliche ruhig zu verehren." (Wke. 39, p. 100). 
 
 He remained in art and thought a realist, always in 
 touch with life, and developed his own ethical and aes- 
 thetic views independently in the light of his own con- 
 science and experience. He cared not to systematize his 
 knowledge, but ever sought for fundamental principles. 
 Whatever in the philosophical speculations of all times 
 he found especially fruitful for his own development and 
 productive of the largest benefit to mankind, he accepted. 
 In his multifarious labors he laid the main stress always 
 upon the synthesis, not upon the analysis. "Dich im 
 Unendlichen zu finden, Muszt unterscheiden und dann 
 verbinden." He arrived at conclusions by his method of 
 careful, scientific observation of the facts of experience, 
 to which was added the creative imaginative power of 
 the artist, so that Emerson could truly say of him : "He 
 is an apology for the analytic spirit of the period, because 
 of his analysis always wholes were the result." It was 
 
32 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 the instinct of the artist that gave him the key to the 
 mystery of mysteries. 
 
 Herein lies the Hne of division between him and the 
 Romanticists. Though both Goethe and the Romanticists 
 were to a certain extent children of tlie Storm and Stress, 
 they followed such different lines of development that in 
 course of time their life and thought showed most strik- 
 ing divergence. Goethe, following the inherent bent of his 
 nature, submitted himself to the schooling of hellenic 
 culture, where alone his artistic sense of form found sat- 
 isfaction, and after the Italian journey in the middle of 
 theeighties he returned home clarified in vision, matured 
 in thought, and assured of his mission as a poet. As a 
 realist his all-absorbing interest was now nature and its 
 processes as revealed in all living organisms, and it was 
 by careful and objective observation and study — reine 
 Anschauung — of these processes that he hoped to find a 
 clue to the meaning of life. He remained a citizen of 
 this world, a child of nature, hoping through a study of 
 the finite to attain the infinite. "Willst du ins Unendliche 
 schreiten, Geh nur im Endlichen nach alien Seiten." The 
 result was renewed activity as a scientist, a hellenism or 
 classicism of form as an artist, and ripe practical wis- 
 dom and counsel as an observer and student of life. 
 
 The Romanticists, on the other hand, had schooled 
 themselves in the Idealistic philosophy; they were stu- 
 dents of the Kantian teaching and especially that of his 
 disciple Fichte, to whose intense subjectivity their natures 
 responded and whose problems they sought to solve. 
 "Die hochste Aufgabe der Bildung," said Novalis, "ist, 
 sich seines transzendentalen Selbst zu bemachtigen, das 
 Ich seines Ichs sogleich zu sein," for according to the 
 early Romanticists the solution of the fundamental ques- 
 tions of life could be arrived at only through the mastery 
 of the Transcendental-ego. Their interest and labor 
 began where Goethe's ended. Going forth from a sub- 
 
GOETHE AND GERMAN ROMANTICISM 33 
 
 jective construction, they sought to fit the empirical 
 world into their metaphysical scheme, whereas Goethe, 
 by observation of the empirical world, sought to arrive 
 at the principles and laws that govern all being. The dis- 
 tinction is the one which Goethe draws when he says: 
 "Alle Empiriker streben nach der Idee und konnen sie in 
 der Mannigfaltigkeit nicht entdecken ; alle Theoretiker 
 suchen sie im Mannigfaltigen und konnen sie darin nicht 
 auffinden." (Wke. 4, p. 250). To the Romanticists the 
 world of the Ideal alone had true reality, and into it they 
 projected themselves and in their art aimed to give to it 
 expression. Their endeavor was to realize the ideal, 
 whereas Goethe's was to idealize the real, or, as expressed 
 in Merck's admonition to the young Goethe : "Dein 
 Bestreben, deine unablenkbare Richtung ist, dem Wirk- 
 lichen eine poetische Gestalt zu geben ; die andern suchen 
 das sogenannte Poetische, das Imaginative zu verwirk- 
 lichen." (Wke. 25, p. 67). Thus while Goethe re- 
 mained ever in touch with the reality of things as re- 
 vealed to the senses, but never blind to an ideal interpre- 
 tation, the Romanticists lost more and more their con- 
 tact with reality and the facts of experience. Funda- 
 mentally we have here two radically different types, which 
 were bound to come into conflict with one another. Yet, 
 in result there is much in common, as a comparison of 
 the Goethean philosophy of nature and that of Schelling 
 discloses. 
 
 What the Romanticists objected to in Goethe was, 
 we would infer, his close touch with the practical details 
 of life and the facts of experience, his worldliness and 
 scant sympathy with the young visionary and theorizer. 
 It was the case of the conservative resisting the efiforts 
 of the young enthusiastic idealist to undermine the exist- 
 ing institutions of life without offering anything definite 
 or effective in substitution. As an artist and poet, they 
 hailed him as the greatest literary genius of the age and 
 
34 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 did much to make him understood amongst his country- 
 men, but his aloofness from them and his seeming in- 
 difference to many of their pet ambitions doubtless did 
 much to help cool their ardor, as did his continued friend- 
 ship with Schiller. On his part, though he sympathized 
 warmly with their efforts and ideas, he was repelled by 
 their vague transcendental effusions and after their ex- 
 travagant aesthetic appreciation of and final conversion 
 to Cathohcism openly expressed his displeasure. In an- 
 other respect a distinction is to be noticed, this, however, 
 in the main a corollary to the fundamental issue. Goethe's 
 long and rich experience, his constant contact with and 
 his untiring observation of the practical affairs of life 
 had taught him the value of resignation and self-denial. 
 Here was an ethical virtue which the Romanticists could 
 not learn to appreciate. Goethe considered it impera- 
 tive for man to realize his limitations and practice self- 
 renunciation, and he firmly believed and taught that man's 
 highest satisfaction and reward was to be found in stren- 
 uous social endeavor. Only in constant activity and labor 
 could the individual attain personal happiness. 
 
 Novalis's criticism of Goethe is typically Romantic 
 and well represents the Romantic attitude: "Goethe ist 
 ganz praktischer Dichter. Er ist in seinen Werken, was 
 der Englander in seinen Waren ist; hochst einfach, nett, 
 
 bequem und dauerhaft Er hat, wie die Englander, 
 
 einen natiirlichen okonomischen, und einen durch Ver- 
 stand erworbenen edeln Geschmack. Beides vertragt 
 sich sehr gut, und hat eine nahe Verwandschaft, in chem- 
 ischem Sinn. In seinen physikalischen Studien wird es 
 recht klar, dasz es seine Neigung ist, eher etwas Unbe- 
 deutendes ganz fertig zu machen, ihm die hochste Politur 
 und Bequemlich.keit zu geben, als eine Welt anzufangen 
 und etwas zu tun, wovon man voraus wisaen kann, dasz 
 man es nicht vollkommen ausfiihren wird, dasz es gewisz 
 ungeschickt bleibt, und dasz man es nie darin zu einei 
 
goijthe; and germ an romanticism. 35 
 
 meisterhaften Fertigkeit bringt. Auch in diesem Felde 
 wahlt er einen romantischen oder sonst artig verschlun- 
 
 genen Gegenstand Wie der Physiker Goethe sich 
 
 zu den iibrigen Physikern verhalt, so der Dichter zu den 
 iibrigen Dichtern. An Umfang, Mannigfaltigkeit und 
 Tiefsinn wird er hier und da iibertroffen; aber an Bil- 
 dungskunst, wer dtirfte sich ihm gleichstellen ? Bei ihm 
 ist alles Tat — wie bei andern alles Tendenz nur ist. Er 
 macht wirklich etwas, wahrend andre nur etwas moglich 
 oder notwendig machen. Notwendige und mogliche 
 Schopfer sind wir alle — aber wie wenig wirkliche. Der 
 Philosoph der Schule wiirde dies vielleicht aktiven Em- 
 pirismus nennen. Wir wollen uns begniigen, Goethens 
 Kiinstlertalent zu betrachten und noch einen BHck auf 
 seinen Verstand werfen. An ihm kann man die Gabe 
 zu abstrahieren, in einem neuen Lichte kennen lernen. 
 Er abstrahiert mit einer seltnen Genauigkeit, aber nie 
 ohne das Objekt zugleich zu konstruieren, dem die 
 Abstraktion entspricht. Dies ist nichts als angewandte 
 Philosophie — und so fanden wir ihn am Ende zu unserm 
 nicht geringen Erstaunen auch als anwendenden, prak- 
 tischen Philosophen, wie denn jeder echte Kiinstler von 
 jeher nichts' anders war. Auch der reine Philosoph wird 
 praktisch sein, wenngleich der anwendende Philosoph 
 sich nicht mit reiner Philosophie abzugeben braucht — 
 denn dies ist eine Kunst fiir sich, (Goethens Meister). 
 
 An Strenge steht Goethe wohl den Alten nach 
 
 • — aber er iibertrifft sie an Gehalt — welches Verdienst 
 jedoch nicht das seinige ist. Sein Meister kommt ihnen 
 nah genug — denn wie sehr ist er Roman schlechtweg, 
 ohne Beiwort — und wie viel ist das in dieser Zeit ! Goethe 
 wird und musz iibertroffen werden, — aber nur wie die 
 Alten iibertroffen werden konnen, an Gehalt und Kraft, 
 an Mannigfaltigkeit und Tiefsinn — als Kiinstler eigent- 
 lich nicht, oder doch nur um sehr wenig, denn seine 
 Richtigkeit und Strenge ist vielleicht schon rnusterhafter, 
 
36 EMERSON AND GOETHi;. 
 
 als es scheint." Of the "Meister" Novalis in much the 
 same spirit notes : "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre sind 
 gewissermaszen durchaus prosaisch und modern. Das 
 Romantische geht darin zugrunde, auch die Naturpoesie, 
 das Wunderbare. Er handelt blosz von gewohnlichen 
 menschlichen Dingen, die Natur und der Mystizism sind 
 ganz vergesfjen. Es ist eine poetisierte biirgerliche und 
 hausliche Gescliichte. Das Wunderbare darin wird aus- 
 driicklich als Poesie und Schwarmerei behandelt. Kiinst- 
 lerischer Atheismus ist der Geist des Buchs. Sehr viel 
 Okonomie ; mit prosaischem, wolilf eilem Stoff in poet- 
 ischer Effekt erreicht."" In the "Heinrich von Ofter- 
 dingen'' Novalis attempted a "Meister" that was to be 
 true to the Romantic ideals. 
 
 Goethe, then, stands forth as one of the leading fig- 
 ures in the larger general Romantic Revolt as it swept 
 over Europe after the downfall of the lationalistic phil- 
 osophy of the Enlightenment, but he can in no way be 
 intimately associated with any one of its more distinctive 
 phases. For that his genius was too great, too universal. 
 The Romanticists, it is true, could find much, very much, 
 in his works which would seem to point him out as their 
 leader and master, but this ■ would apply also to many 
 others of the world's great minds. Fundamentally their 
 natures diverged, however much there may have been 
 to bring them together. 
 
 Among the New England Transcendentalists Emerson 
 stands out as the leading spokesman. He represents to 
 us the noblest type of the American Transcendentalist, 
 and when we wish to acquaint ourselves with the leading 
 ideas and principles of the Movement and to understand 
 the motives which underlay this ethical, romantic revolt 
 we turn involuntarily to his pages, for there we find them 
 most sanely and clearly expressed. He was of the Move- 
 ment, but not always in it ; for he held himself aloof from 
 all the vagaries, eccentricities, and petty reforms in which 
 
GOETIIi; AND GURMAN ROMANTICISM. 37 
 
 its spurious energy found outlet. Though his thought 
 towered into the heavens he was content to reside on 
 earth. His reading was vast and varied, and he absorbed 
 all that was best in the multitude of influences that helped 
 to mold the spirit of Transcendentalism. And so he was 
 also a reader and student of Goethe, and produced the 
 most representative statement of the attitude which the 
 Transcendentalists on the whole took toward the greatest 
 of German poets. 
 
 It is our purpose, therefore, in this study to examine 
 Hmerson's reading and criticism of Goethe and seek to 
 determine the foundation and relative worth of his 
 opinions in the light of his immediate environment, New 
 England Transcendentalism, which was the American ex- 
 pression of the larger Romantic Revolt. 
 
GOETHE IN NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 To obtain an estimate of the reception of Goethe's 
 writings in America and the resultant reading and opinion 
 of him as author and man, one turns to the numerous, 
 articles which appeared in the contemporary magazines, 
 both English and American. These contain general dis- 
 cussions of German literary subjects, making mention of 
 the latest publications and reviewing the literary master- 
 pieces. Many, interspersed with bits of translation, ap- 
 peared first in the British magazines, and were later re- 
 printed in some leading American journal. Their aim 
 was the introduction to the EngHsh reading-public of 
 tlie works of German thought and scholarship, in par- 
 ticular those of their leading literary figxires, principally 
 Goethe. Later, after it had become possible to obtain 
 more direct access to the works in question and after 
 Goethe had become more than a mere name, one comes 
 upon the written opinion of the New Englanders them- 
 selves as expressed in their works and correspondence. 
 Here we are confronted in the main with two groups, the 
 Transcendentalists and those whom for convenience we 
 may designate as the non-Transcendentalists, composed 
 of those who openly repudiated the "new-views" and of 
 those who remained more or less indifferent to the con- 
 troversy. In point of time one may divide the in- 
 terest in Goethe into three general divisions;'-'' the first 
 terminates with the year 1817 and is characterized by little 
 first-hand knowledge of German writings, being mainly 
 
GOETHE IX NEW ENGLAND. 39 
 
 dependent upon English opinion ; the second division falls 
 between the years 1817-32, — from the return of Everett 
 until the appearance of Carlyle's last article — and marks 
 the period of introduction and preparation; the third 
 division from 1832-45, is one of active interest and of 
 original study, the outgrowth to a large extent of the 
 previous efforts. 
 
 Up to 1817 there was a seeming indifference on the 
 part of most Americans to all things German. The 
 American was still almost entirely under English dom- 
 inance in artistic and literary matters and looked to Eng- 
 land for guidance. The fear that German writings were 
 sources of moral contamination, before which the ortho- 
 dox Unitarian must astutely intrench himself, prevailed 
 in New England. As in England during the last decades 
 of the eighteenth century, so in America German litera- 
 ture was known chiefly through the works of Gessner, 
 Lavater, Gellert, Kotzebue, and also Schiller's "Rauber,'' 
 and Goethe's "Werther,'' and the opinion prevailed that 
 the Germans in their artistic effort suffered from a la- 
 mentable lack of taste. Even so late as 1816 Gessner is 
 lauded as the only German writer not deficient in taste, 
 whereas "Werther" and the "Rauber" are continually 
 disapproved as of a harmful nature." America passed 
 through a Werther-fever, between the years 1784-91 ; six 
 editions appeared between 1784- 1807, the first being a 
 reprint of the earliest English translation which had ap- 
 peared five years earlier and which was itself a transla- 
 tion indirectly from the German through the French. The 
 work enjoyed great vogue for a time and was as greatly 
 censured as it was widely read. During the last decade 
 of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the 
 nineteenth mention and reviews of Goethe's works ap- 
 peared in the magazines. ^^ The "Elective Affinities" and 
 the "Dichtung und Wahrheit" were reviewed, and in 1814 
 there appeared an article on Goethe's "Farbenlehre" in 
 
40 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 the Quarterly Review. In 1812 a noteworthy article upon 
 the "Elective Affinities" came out in Walsh's American 
 ^Magazine, in which the author found words of praise for 
 Goethe, but censured his moral laxity. There was real 
 life in the story, but "in many parts a total lack of 
 delicacy." 
 
 In 1814 we find the articles on Mme. deStael's "De 
 I'Allemagne" reprinted from the Edinburgh Review. This 
 work was widely read and was regarded as an excellent 
 introduction to German literature and philosophy. Almost 
 all the later New England students of Goethe became 
 interested in German writings and thought first of all 
 through the reading of Mme. deStael. In her work 
 Go2the was characterized as the one writer who united 
 in himself all of those distinctions peculiar to the Ger- 
 man "esprit," a poet most truly representative of the 
 German genius ; a man who, though he attained to the 
 most sublime heights, never lost touch with earth ; a 
 personality calm and serene, giving, however, little con- 
 solation to tlic soul and viewing with an apparently cool 
 objectivity both the evil and the good phases of life. 
 Snatches of translation were given, among others of 
 "Eaust," which she failed to understand and therefore 
 misconstrued. She was displeased with its lack of classic 
 regularity and considered "Egmont" a far better piece. 
 Her judgment colored most of the contemporary criti- 
 cism of Goethe and his works, and though it served to 
 widen the acquaintance of the world with German art 
 and thought, it did not materially alter the conception 
 then prevailing. 
 
 In 1817 appeared Edward Everett's noteworthy re- 
 view of Goethe's "Dichtung und Wahrheit" in the North 
 American Review, which, in view of the fact that its 
 author had just returned from study in Germany, found 
 an attentive public. Everett translated many passages 
 from the work and attempted to present Goethe's life in 
 
GOETlIi; IN NKW ENCtAND. 4I. 
 
 an impartial spirit, regretting the fact that the reading- 
 public had thus far had so little opportunity to become- 
 acquainted with the German poet. "Goethe is as yet but 
 inadequately known to us, by the translation of 'Werther' 
 
 and the work of Mme. deStael Were we called 
 
 upon to say which is the master-piece of Goethe, we 
 should, with some hesitation, pronounce it to be 'Faust,' 
 that alien from the empire of criticism; This work is 
 already known to our readers, from the account of Mme.. 
 deStael, inadequate as a judgment, formed upon French 
 models is, to decide upon a production like the one in 
 
 question As for the piece itself considered as a 
 
 poetical work, we do not know that it is of unexampled 
 excellence, and it is far from being free from much, 
 which needs must be called stuff. But there are flights 
 and touches, we think, of which it would not be easy to 
 find a parallel since Shakespeare." 
 
 The return of Ticknor, Everett, Bancroft, Hedge, and 
 Calvert from abroad, their enthusiasm for German cul- 
 ture, and their subsequent activity in academic and schol- 
 arly labors was a great incentive in bringing about a more 
 objective reading and study of Goethe's works. Some of 
 them had been Goethe's guests in Weimar and had met 
 and conversed with him upon subjects of mutual interest. 
 Goethe's knowledge of America was enlarged by such 
 meetings, and the visitors returned home fondly cherish- 
 ing in their memories the few hours spent with him. They 
 were able to furnish him welcome information concern- 
 ing the limitless opportunities of the United States in both 
 cultural and commercial directions. They procured for 
 him geological specimens and books on America, and 
 thereby fostered his interests in the geological formation 
 of the American continent. They helped to keep him in 
 touch with the latest English and American literary pro- 
 ductions, and interested him in the educational endeavors 
 in the new world. His remarkably prophetic interest in 
 
42 EMURSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 an isthmian canal by which the two American continents 
 were to be separated is too well-known now to need fur- 
 ther comment. It was largely through the efforts of 
 J. G. Cogswell, then a student in Europe and later li- 
 brarian and professor of mineralogy and chemistry in 
 Harvard and afterwards associated with G. Bancroft in 
 the famous "Round Hill School" at Northampton, Mass., 
 where German methods of instruction were introduced, 
 that Goethe was induced to present in 1819 an edition 
 of his scientific and poetic works to the library of Har- 
 vard University.^'* 
 
 Bancroft's article on Goethe was published in the 
 North American Review in October, 1824. His plea was 
 for an unbiased and just hearing of the claims of Ger- 
 man literature as one of truly national significance. "Most 
 eminent German writers have been misunderstood : Ger- 
 man thought and poetry have been commonly criticised 
 and condemned in America. The literature of a nation 
 
 must be approached with respect contains all the 
 
 noble feelings, the creed, the morals, and the aspiration 
 
 of a people The culture and productions of the 
 
 Germans have much that is original and peculiar ; and 
 every peculiarity only makes them more worthy of re- 
 spect, just as reverence is especially due to anyone, who 
 can teach new lessons on life and the mode of regulating 
 the passions." Bancroft presents Goethe as the "most 
 national poet of the Germans, the most fit representative 
 of their literature." Think what one may of his pro- 
 ductions, he says, one can no longer dispute his genius. 
 His works, intimately connected with his private life, are 
 not always "the highest kind of fine writing, for a poet 
 must do more than feel deeply and breatlie what he has 
 felt into words. Presei'ving his own mind serene, he 
 must observe and express whatever is pure and delicate 
 and noble in human nature and the universe." This 
 Goethe did not always do, he thinks. For that reason 
 
G05THI5 IN NEW ENGLAND. 43 
 
 many of his writings could not become popular in 
 America, though one finds in them always a spirit of 
 tolerance and kindness, not scorn. "By incorporating 
 into his verse and his romances the experience of his 
 life he becomes a practical guide, though he may more 
 frequently warn against danger, than direct towards 
 purity and virtue." Yet the critic is indignant, surprised, 
 and disgusted, as he says, "that a man of fine genius, 
 conversant with the sentiments and principles which are 
 
 the living springs of beauty should have stooped to 
 
 win a disgraceful popularity by appeal to the weakness 
 and unworthy passions of human nature, and darken the 
 clear revelations of celestial beauty by the mixture of 
 earthly passions." This article, by far one of the most 
 appreciative that had yet appeared in America, presented 
 Goethe, then, as a great genius, a "consummate master 
 in his art" truly typical of the German spirit, and hence 
 not to be too minutely measured by English and Ameri- 
 can norms of criticism; as one who' sought to promote 
 "love for the arts, for activity, for truth, to promote just 
 and benevolent deeds," and yet liable to condemnation 
 for "occasional levity" and "not of a purely moral tend- 
 ency." In the Studies in German literature which ap- 
 peared in the "Literary and Historical Miscellanies" of 
 1855, Bancroft adopts a much more severe and hostile 
 attitude toward Goethe.^* He ably characterizes Goethe's 
 realistic bent of mind, however, in the words : "the char- 
 acter of Goethe's mind is that of self-possession 
 
 The peculiar mark set upon all his writings is a placid 
 contentment with nature and reality. He never turned 
 in disgust from the world in which he has his being. 
 Life and man are his themes. He does not require to 
 annihilate everything that is clear and individual around 
 him, in order to gain free exercise for fancy in an ideal 
 world; he is like the fabled giaiits, who were strongest 
 when their feet touched the earth. There is in him no 
 
44 KMERSON AND GOUTHE. 
 
 trace of sickliness of mind, no lines worn by a diseased 
 imagination. The beings who move, speak, and act in 
 his works, are men and women, of veriest flesh and blood. 
 It is of human nature that he unfolds the panorama." 
 
 In 1825 Dr. Follen became instructor in German at 
 Harvard College. The meagre knowledge of the lan- 
 guage at that time is attested by the fact that Goethe's 
 name was pronounced 'Go-ith' at Harvard. ^^ Dr. Pol- 
 len's lectures were well attended ; he laid especial empha- 
 sis on Korner and Schiller and to a large extent dispar- 
 aged Goethe. In his published lectures on Schiller we 
 find a statement of this attitude toward Goethe,^" and 
 inasmuch as he became a most influential and respected 
 friend of the Transcendental group and was himself of 
 German birth and education, his opinion bore no little 
 weight. He characterized Goethe as a man "essentially 
 satisfied with things as they are, and with the powers 
 
 that be His course was not that of a reformer. 
 
 He kept aloof from all the great questions that divided 
 men in politics and religion. He devoted his talents and 
 himself wholly to the study of nature and art, to inter- 
 course with men of genius and men of rank, if their 
 hereditary station was graced by a love of literature and 
 art, to the promotion of all institutions, the object of 
 which was instruction and refinement." His interest in 
 nature, aside from his art, led him to patient and pains- 
 taking scientific research. Still in all his works one finds 
 "not one moral beau ideal." "He has access and does 
 justice to all the longings of the heart ex- 
 cept that one mysterious desire after infinite perfection, 
 which, from its very nature, appears more in failures 
 than in successful efiforts, and thus produces the highest 
 form of heroism, the character of the Martyr" .... 
 "Goethe cannot be said to have struck out any'new path, 
 but to have tried his powers in every field of literature 
 that had been cultivated by others, and to have raised 
 
GOETHE IN NEW ENGLAND. 45 
 
 choice fruits in each." An artist, a scientist, a scholar, 
 a man of the world, incapable of the highest vision, un- 
 able to appreciate the nobility of self-denial in any great 
 unselfish aim, wilfully isolating himself from all troublous 
 contemporary issues, intent upon his own well-being — 
 such was the Goethe which Follen introduced to his stu- 
 dents and friends. 
 
 The activity of these men and others prepared the 
 way for the reception of Carlyle's famous Essays, which 
 appeared in English periodicals from 1827-32, and were 
 widely read in New England.^' Carlyle was the cham- 
 pion of Goethe among English-speaking peoples, and to 
 him more than to any other was due the eager interest 
 and study of the German poet in New England during 
 the next decade. In 1824 the translation of the "Lehr- 
 jahre" had appeared, which became perhaps the most 
 censured and the most highly praised book of its time, 
 into a dispute of whose relative merits and demerits were 
 drawn most of the master minds of the contemporary 
 literary world. In the introduction to the work Carlyle 
 with caustic pen wrote of the prevalent notions of Ger- 
 man writers and writings : " in our ancient aristoc- 
 racy of intellect we disdain to be assisted by the Germans, 
 whom, by a species of second sight we have discovered, 
 before knowing about them, to be a tumid, dreaming, 
 extravagant, insane race of mortals ; certain it is, that 
 hitherto our literary intercourse with that nation has 
 
 been very slight and precarious Kotzebue still 
 
 lives in our minds as the representative of a nation that 
 despises him ; Schiller is chiefly known to us by the mon- 
 strous production of his boyhood; and Klopstock by a 
 
 hacked and mangled image of his "Messias" But 
 
 of all there is none who has been more unjustly dealt with 
 than Johann Wolfgang Goethe. For half a century the 
 admiration, we might almost say the idol of his country- 
 men, to us he is still a stranger. His name, long echoed 
 
46 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 and re-echoed through reviews and magazines, has been 
 familiar to our ears, but it is a sound and nothing more ; 
 
 it excites no definite idea in ahnost any mind (he) 
 
 is regarded as a man of 'some genius,' which he has per- 
 verted to produce all manner of misfashioned prodigies; 
 things false, abortive, formless, gorgons and hydras and 
 chimeras dire." 
 
 To correct this misconception of Goethe and to teach 
 the ethical value of his writings became Carlyle's aim in 
 the Essays. In Goethe of all men of his time he found a 
 "true Hero," the Hero as Literary man. "To that man 
 too, in a strange way, there was given what we may call 
 a life in the Divine Idea of the World; a vision of the 
 inward divine mystery; and .strangely, out of his Books, 
 rises imaged once more as godlike, the workmanship and 
 
 temple of a God really a Prophecy in these most 
 
 unprophetic times."'-* Goethe to him was: (i) an Ar- 
 tist, "in the high and ancient meaning of that term 
 
 the most striking instance, in our time, of a writer who 
 
 is what philosophy can call a Man 'a clear 
 
 and universal man' "; (2) "The Teacher and exemplar of 
 
 his age he has cultivated himself and his art, he 
 
 has studied how to write, there is embodied in 
 
 these soft, melodious imaginations of his the Wisdom 
 which is proper to this time glimpses of the Un- 
 seen but not unreal World, that so the Actual and the 
 Ideal may again meet together, and clear Knowledge be 
 again wedded to Religion, in the life and business of 
 men";" (3) "The Writer, and victorious Reconciler, of 
 the distracted, clashing elements of the most distracted 
 and divided age that the world has witnessed since the 
 
 Introduction of the Christian Religion." "The 
 
 Strong One of his time, the thing that was given 
 
 this man to reconcile, was the inward spiritual 
 
 chaos the Abyss out of which such manifold de- 
 struction, moral, intellectual, social, was proceeding" ; 
 
GOUTHE IN NDW ENGLAND. 47 
 
 (4) "A Thinker in the highest of all senses : he is a Poet. 
 
 For Goethe the world lies all translucent, all 
 
 fusible we might call it, encircled with Wonder; the Na- 
 tural in reality the Supernatural revelations of the 
 
 Mystery of all Mysteries, Man's life as it actually is".^" 
 With "perfect tolerance for all men and all things", with 
 ■'majestic Calmness" and "perfect Clearness of Vision", 
 "His grand excellency was this that he was genuine. As 
 his primary faculty, the foundation of all others, was 
 Intellect, depth and force of vision; so his primary virtue 
 was Justice, the courage to be just. A giant strength 
 
 the greatest of hearts a completed Man."^^ 
 
 It was a Goethean message that Carlyle with all the stub- 
 born strength of his being went forth to preach his coun- 
 trymen in "Sartor Resartus" — "Reader! To Thee thy- 
 self, even now, he has one counsel to give, the secret of 
 his whole poetic alchemy : Gedenke zu Leben. Yes, 'think 
 of living'. Thy Hfe, wert thou the 'pitifulest of all the 
 sons of earth' is no idle dream, but a solemn reality. It 
 is thy own; it is all thou hast to front eternity with. 
 Work then, even as he has done and does. — 'Like a star, 
 Unhasting, yet Unresting.' "^^ 
 
 From the point of view of comparative literature 
 Carlyle's Essays on German poetry are of prime import- 
 ance. Alone among his influential contemporaries he was 
 mediator of the Goethean philosophy. To Wordsworth 
 Goethe was "an artificial -writer," lacking clear moral 
 perceptions, and though aiming to be universal, constantly 
 exposing his individuality, which his character was not 
 of a kind to dignify. Coleridge, and in much the sarne 
 vein Southey, Lamb, DeQuincey, criticised Goethe "for 
 his want of moral life, religion, and enthusiasm."^^ Car- 
 lyle discovered in him "by far the notablest of all Lit- 
 erary Men for the last hundred years," and recommended 
 his works to all serious-minded students. "Close thy 
 Byron; open thy Goethe," he called. J. F. Clarke tells 
 
48 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 US of the efifect of his articles amongst the students of 
 
 New England; " his articles on Goethe were the 
 
 most attractive because he asserted that in this patriarch 
 of German literature, he had found one who saw in all 
 things their real essence, one whose majestic and trained 
 intelligence could interpret to us in all parts of nature 
 and life the inmost quality, the terza essenza, as the Italian 
 Platonists called it, which made each itself. Goethe was 
 announced as the prophet of Realism. He, it should 
 seem, had perfectly escaped from words into things. He 
 saw the world, not through dogmas, traditions, formulas, 
 but as it was in itself."^* Emerson, terming the essays 
 "the most original and profound essays of the day," col- 
 lected them and brought about their publication in 1838- 
 39 and in 1835 had the first edition of the "Sartor" 
 placed before the public. ^'^ The names of Emerson, Car- 
 lyle, and Goethe, became indelibly associated among the 
 conservative element in New England with all that was 
 dangerous and destructive to religious thought and moral 
 well-being. "The writers warn all and sundry against 
 me, and against whatever is supposed to be related to my 
 connection of opinion, etc. ; against Transcendentalism, 
 Goethe, and Carlyle." Thus Emerson writes to Carlyle 
 in 1838 after the publication of the "Divinity College 
 Address."^'' 
 
 With Carlyle's articles the period of introduction 
 practically came to an end. Goethe was no longer a mere 
 name. Editions of his works were to be had at th'e li- 
 braries of Harvard College and at the Athenaeum, and in 
 the private collections of such men as Hedge and Ripley. 
 The period of active study now began, with the result 
 that articles and reviews frequently appeared in the 
 magazines, and works of greater pretension also came 
 from American hands. 
 
 Among the larger publications, apart from Carlyle, 
 which made their way to America and were eagerly read 
 
GOUTHE IN NEW ENGLAND. 49 
 
 by the students of Goethe, mention must be made of the 
 work of Mrs. Sarah Austin, one of the most active 
 mediators between German and English culture. In 
 1833 her "Characteristics of Goethe," which contained in 
 the main translations of the works of Falk and von Miil- 
 ler, was brought out in London and received with great 
 pleasure as giving more intimate knowledge of the life 
 and thought of the great German. In the introduction to 
 her work Mrs. Austin placed especial emphasis upon 
 Goethe's universality of genius and his perfect ease in 
 "every region of the Actual and Possible." His critics 
 were unjust, she contended, in accusing him of apathy 
 and selfishness and of being a partisan, for "his labors for 
 the improvement of the human race were unwearied, 
 calm, and systematic." His interest lay in whatever 
 could be observed and described, not in the supersensible. 
 He was preeminently the Artist, regarding art as "in and 
 for itself moral, humanizing, and beneficent." 
 
 In 1839 there appeared two volumes in George Rip- 
 ley's "Specimens," as has been noted; the first a transla- 
 tion of select poems of Goethe and Schiller with a preface 
 by John S. Dwight, of which Carlyle in his letter of 
 acknowledgment to Emerson said, "No Englishman to 
 my knowledge has yet uttered as much sense about Goethe 
 and German things ;"^^ the other the translation of the 
 first two volumes of Eckermann's "Gesprache" with an 
 introduction by Margaret Fuller. These works were wel- 
 comed and reviewed in most of the leading periodicals. 
 
 In 1840 appeared Felton's translation of Menzel's 
 "History of German Literature," which contained a most 
 violent attack upon Goethe and itself called forth criti- 
 cism and censure from every side, among others from the 
 pens of Margaret Fuller and Theodore Parker. Menzel's 
 work appeared in Germany in 1827, was reissued in 1836, 
 and, aiming at a most comprehensive treatment of the 
 general literary field, was in many respects strikingly 
 
50 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 original and suggestive. It was well-written and widely 
 read and exerted great iniluence amongst the uninitiated, 
 though it was most partisan and misleading in its critical 
 judgments. As a critic MenzeP* lacked calmness and 
 objectivity; he wrote with passionate energy and spared 
 no lash, wherever his displeasure and anger were aroused. 
 He was the leading opponent of the classical and ro- 
 mantic tradition and in some of his ideas was a precursor 
 of the movement which is known as "Young Germany." 
 He espoused the cause of patriotic idealism, interpreting 
 it as the regeneration of the old, sound Teutonic spirit 
 which would lead to the establishment of a united Ger- 
 many. The present age was to him negative and sickly; 
 it lacked the old idealism of health and faith and strength 
 and was sadly corrupted by a vain egoism and pride. His 
 dream was of a worthy and resolute people and of a 
 strong political power. Like Treitschke he considered his 
 own opponents traitors to their fatherland, for in his 
 opinion his own position was always incontestable. He 
 turned from both aestheticism and philistinism in hor- 
 ror, regarding them as forces hostile to the attainment 
 of his ideal. He looked forward to a national and moral 
 rather than a larger cosmopolitan and humanitarian 
 state. He started out as an outspoken liberal, but ended 
 as a most intolerant and arrogant conservative, allying 
 himself with the forces of the law in his aggressive effort 
 to suppress all free literary works. In common with the 
 ideals of "Young Germany" he demanded an intimate 
 union between art and life, contending that art and litera- 
 ture had a purpose only in so far as they were the hand- 
 maids of politics, religion, and social and moral teaching. 
 Menzel's work is remembered chiefly because of its 
 vices, not its virtues, and in particular because of its 
 shameless tirade against Goethe. One can admire his in- 
 tense and indomitable patriotic idealism, but one turns 
 in disgust from his selfish indifference to the means em- 
 
GOETHB IN NEW i;nGI,AND. 51 
 
 ployed in meeting his opponents, for his pohtical and 
 aesthetic antipathies were but too often colored by his 
 own personal and selfish interests. Once estranged from 
 his erstwhile protegee, Gutzkow, for -example, he spared 
 no abuse in his attack upon him, and indeed upon the 
 whole "Young German" movement, so soon as he found 
 his own personal prestige in danger. He allied himself 
 to the conservative forces in his attempt to pose as in- 
 quisitor and censor of all literary and artistic produc- 
 tion. He is remembered as the denunciator, largely be- 
 cause of his vituperative attack upon Goethe. 
 
 The writers of "Young Germany," Heine, Laube, 
 Gutzkow, and Borne, were all hostile to Goethe, though 
 not equally so. They regarded him as representing a 
 purely aesthetic stand-point, out of touch with their own 
 aspirations, and social-idealism, and they were doubtless 
 piqued by his seemingly indifferent superiority to their 
 own early efforts and ambitions. In their youthful en- 
 thusiastic idealism they did not consider that his great 
 labors lay with those of the preceding generation and that 
 he had now entrenched himself in the conservatism of 
 age. His cosmopolitanism was an affront to their dream 
 of national regeneration, and they found him cool, con- 
 descending, egoistic, unpatriotic, and, in his large, toler- 
 ant acceptance of life, immoral. They were filled with 
 a new spirit of decision and action, and were bitter in 
 their antagonism to the passive and receptive temper of 
 their predecessors and contemporaries, who took Goethe 
 as their model. Laube draws the distinction well when 
 he says of Goethe: "Er wollte betrachten und die Welt 
 wollte handeln." 
 
 Menzel attacked Goethe in his first writings in 1823, 
 finding in him a vain egoism and pride as dominant traits, 
 and also all the effeminate vices of a degenerate time. 
 There was in him none of the primal Teutonic strength 
 and vigor which Menzel considered as alone worthy of 
 
52 KMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 emulation. Jean Paul was his especial favorite, and in 
 the "German Literature'' he proclaimed Tieck as the su- 
 preme poet in his country's literature. Goethe was to him 
 a corruptor of the public moral welfare, entirely lacking 
 in the soundness and virility of Schiller, Tieck, and Jean 
 Paul. He was a menace to German political development 
 and to the religious and moral welfare of the land. He 
 was an imitator of foreign models, a servant of princes 
 and capable of any degradation to obtain for himself 
 popular applause, and thus satisfy the vanities of his own 
 egoism. Goethe's cosmopolitan spirit and admiration for 
 the genius of Napoleon, whom the "Young Germans" 
 justly hated as the oppressor of their country, was a spur 
 to Menzel's wrathful antipathy. The great poet was 
 characterized as a mere virtuoso, a gifted "Mode-dichter," 
 a man of talent but not of genius. 
 
 "The entire phenomenon of Goethe is a reflex, a 
 closely compressed and variously colored image of his 
 
 age As Lessing emancipated the German mind 
 
 from foreign influence, Goethe subjected it to this influ- 
 ence by toying with every people under the sun. The only 
 good which he had with this bad tendency, and that by 
 which he attained so great power, was his form — his 
 
 talent of language, of representation, of dress We 
 
 perceive egotism to be the inmost essense of his poetry, 
 as of his whole life; not the egotism of the hero and the 
 heaven-storming Titan, but only of the Sybarite and the 
 actor, the egotism of the passion for pleasure and the 
 vanity of art. Goethe referred everything to himself, 
 made himself the center of the world, excluding every- 
 thing that did not minister to his desires But he did 
 
 not make use of his power and his high rank to elevate, 
 improve, and emancipate men, or to announce and sup- 
 port any great idea whatever, or to fight in the battles 
 which his contemporaries were waging, for right, free- 
 dom, honor, and country. By no means If he but 
 
GOETHE IX NEW ENGEAND. 53 
 
 found applause, he cared nothing for the sufferings of 
 his country. Nay, he took occasion to utter his venomous 
 hate against the free and mighty movements of the times, 
 the moment he was disagreeably affected and disturbed 
 
 by them When he had at length gained sufficient 
 
 fame and applause by his really extraordinary talent, he 
 gave himself up, like an adored stage-princess, to all his 
 pleasures and petty caprices. He not only ceased to put 
 the least disguise upon his egotism, but made it a matter 
 of pride, and imposed upon his slavish, readers by the un- 
 abashed display of his thousand vanities." As a critic 
 Menzel lacked dignity and reserve, and allowed himself 
 to be carried away by his heated emotions and irascible 
 temper. He did not question the truth of his own state- 
 ments, and even had he known Goethe better his view 
 would doubtless have been unjust, for his attitude was the 
 result of his own militant ideals and personal sympathies 
 and artistic limitations. 
 
 This attitude had already been essentially expressed, 
 though in more moderate tei-ms, in America by Dr. Fol- 
 len, whose sympathies, as we have noted, were with the 
 young patriotic idealists of the type of Ernst Moritz 
 Arndt and Theodor Korner. Both Follen and Menzel 
 considered Schiller a nobler and greater poet than Goethe ; 
 Schiller was to them the poet of the Ideal, of freedom 
 from all oppression, spiritual and physical, and of love 
 for all that is good and true and elevating in human 
 nature. So this view of Goethe, which is generally re- 
 ferred to Menzel, was current in New England, long be- 
 fore the appearance of Felton's translation, for Follen's 
 opinion as that of a cultured and highly respected Ger- 
 man surely exerted considerable influence in the com- 
 munity. This work, then, was beyond doubt particu- 
 larly pleasant food for a certain group of individuals in 
 their hostiHty to Goethe, Carlyle, and Emerson, even 
 though Felton in the introduction to his translation 
 
54 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 sought to alleviate the severity of the diatribe. For, as 
 almost all the Transcendentalists were known as ardent 
 students of Goethe, the orthodox, in accordance with 
 their attack upon Transcendentalism, let loose their ve- 
 hemence upon him. 
 
 In 1830 there appeared in the Christian Examiner a 
 review of Goethe's "Iphigenie," by C. C. Felton, then pro- 
 fessor of Greek, later president of Harvard, the same 
 who translated Menzel. The drama was commended as 
 preserving "the essential spirit of the Grecian character 
 softened by the deeper sentiment of a more cultivated 
 age." Goethe himself was presented as a genius of "un- 
 rivalled versatiHty," possessing the' "power of entering 
 into and identifying himself completely with every mode 
 and phasis of human life," yet not subjected to an in- 
 ferior egotistic spirit; but Felton, like all New Eng- 
 landers, was offended and repelled by many of Goethe's 
 "worthless and impure" characters and "licentious 
 novels." 
 
 In 1833 and 1834 Andrews Norton, one of the severe 
 opponents of the Transcendental doctrine, attacked 
 Goethe in two articles in the "Select Journal of Foreign 
 Literature," of which he was senior editor. In his scath- 
 ing criticism of the "Wilhelm Meister" and the "Elective 
 Affinities," he doubts : "Whether a cultivated English 
 reader of correct principles and good taste could un- 
 hesitatingly lay his hand on any one of them (Goethe's 
 works) and say it would have been a loss to mankind had 
 it not appeared."^" 
 
 In 183s a very creditable review of Goethe's works by 
 Leonard Wood, Jr., appeared in the Literary and Theo- 
 logical Review, and in 1836 in the Southern Literary 
 Messenger, George H. Calvert, who had been a student 
 at Gottingen and had himself visited Goethe in Weimar, 
 published his lecture on German literature. Wood had 
 praise for the "unexampled variety" of Goethe's work 
 
GOUTHE IN NEW ENGIvAND. 55 
 
 and his thorough "acquaintance with the human heart," 
 but he too was repulsed by the seeming lack of moral 
 conscience in Goethe. "He refers everything uncon- 
 sciously almost, to the standard of taste instead of the 
 bar of conscience. His estimate of objects founded upon 
 their agreeableness or disagreeableness, their external ap- 
 pearance, not upon their right or wrong, — their internal 
 
 reality." "He writes hke an Epicurean philosopher, 
 
 more than like a Christian." To Calvert Goethe possessed, 
 like Shakespeare, "a mind, which ranges over every pro- 
 vince of human thought." He characterized the "Wil- 
 helm Meister" as "the greatest prose fiction ever pro- 
 duced." 
 
 in 1839 two noteworthy articles were brought out, 
 the one a superior exposition of Goethe's literary product 
 in the New York Review, the other a very severe and 
 even abusive and Menzel-like arraignment in the Chris- 
 tian Examiner by Wm. Ware, its editor and owner. 
 Ware sums up ruthlessly all the current censure of Goethe 
 as writer and man, and his tone is as malevolent as his 
 views are distorted. He contrasts Goethe and Schiller, 
 heaping all the abuse upon the former and all the praise 
 upon the latter. To him Goethe had no philosophy, no 
 creed, no principles. Representative of his age, he came 
 into a world of ruins, which he had neither courage nor 
 strength to rebuild. He had no faith in God, in man, or 
 in woman. He "never risked the frown of a German 
 
 prince for anybody On political subjects he was 
 
 discreetly silent, except that he adored rank ever 
 
 ready with flattery for the ruling powers of the day." 
 He was the poet who represented "the morals, the politics, 
 the imagination, the character, of the broken-down aris- 
 tocracy, that hovered in the skirts of defeated dynasty, 
 and gathered as a body-guard round the bier of legiti- 
 macy." He was insincere, an artist, not a man; inferior 
 to Voltaire, not only in genius and industry, but still 
 
56 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 more in morality. His writings, in particular the "Meis- 
 ter," teach the "sovereignty of impulse," of yielding to 
 passion and neglecting Hfe's responsibilities. "He was 
 one of the most wary, calculating, circumspect people of 
 
 his times A free-press was not to him a desirable 
 
 thing;" and Ware gives an entirely distorted interpreta- 
 tion of Goethe's phrase, "Freedom consists in knowing 
 how to respect whatever is above us."'° 
 
 The critic in the New York Review presents Goethe 
 as a great student of nature, one who made the pursuit 
 of truth as revealed by nature the occupation of his life. 
 His interests were universal, and "his universalism led 
 him to observe all things but to estimate them as it were 
 equally."' The human passions, the various and changing 
 phases of the human heart and intellect engaged his care- 
 ful attention as well as the phenomena of nature, and as 
 regards the former he used himself as object, so that 
 "every one of his works forms the result of a painful 
 observation of himself." In this respect he was a colossal 
 egoist. Calm, never forcing himself, sincere, industrious, 
 above all an artist, he was "a passive and unmoved spec- 
 tator" in the midst of the struggle and turmoil of his age. 
 "Wilhelm Meister" receives mention as a "treatise upon 
 or rather a digest of Universalism," whereas "Faust" is 
 named the greatest poem of the age; but the "Wahlver- 
 wandschaften" is misunderstood and characterized as a 
 "distorted picture drawn by one accustomed to treat the 
 intellectual physically, to regard virtue and vice, happi- 
 ness and anguish, bad passions and holy impulses, purely 
 as phenomena." On the whole the review is one of the 
 most truly appreciative of all the critical words on Goethe 
 which appeared at this time. "To make the most of the 
 present life, of present knowledge; to develop to the 
 utmost the human intellect as it exists ; and to look for- 
 ward to their complete expansion, to their perfect devel- 
 opment in some future existence, with faith, with placid 
 
GOBTHE IN NEW ENGLAND. 57 
 
 and unrepining hope; to be universal within the present 
 limitations of humanity, and to trust for an universal and 
 
 unbounded existence in a future sphere ; this was 
 
 Goethe." 
 
 In the same year there appeared, too, a work by one 
 of the foremost of American hterary men, containing a 
 statement on Goethe, which in a way gave a resume of 
 the contemporary attitude. This book was Longfellow's 
 "Hyperion," called by Thomas Wentworth Higginson 
 "the first real importation into our literature of the wealth 
 of German romance and song."^^ As an artist, said Long- 
 fellow, Goethe revealed his character in the choice of 
 subject, for he "never sculptored an Apollo, nor painted 
 a Madonna. He gives only sinful Magdalens and ram- 
 pant Fauns. He does not so much ideahze as realize." 
 Looking upon all things as objects of art merely, "he 
 only copies nature," and hence belongs to the imitative 
 rather than the imaginative school of art. As a man, 
 Longfellow objected chiefly to his "sensuahty," yet in 
 the face of all adverse criticism maintained that "with 
 all his errors and shortcomings he was a glorious speci- 
 men of a man a kind of rhymed Ben Franklin," 
 
 practical, philosophical, and with a propensity to scientific 
 investigation. 
 
 We turn now to the Transcendentalists, who came 
 more especially under the tutelage of Carlyle and stood 
 in more intimate relation to Emerson. The principal 
 statements representative of their attitude appeared in 
 the "Dial" in the years 1840-42. 
 
 William Ellery Channing, we are told, was first in- 
 troduced to German literature and thought by Mme. 
 deStael. Coleridge and Carlyle then aided him where 
 translations failed. Of the German writers "he knew 
 Richter and Schiller and Goethe well, — Schiller's per- 
 sonality appeahng to him more than Goethe's, whose 
 selfishness was an offense." But "his judgment of Goethe 
 
58 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 was by no means so harsh as we would anticipate 
 
 When the strain of 'Wilhelm Meister' was too great, he 
 would say 'let us have something a little more enliven- 
 ing'.''"- Channing's was an open mind and we may feel 
 assured that he gave the German poet at least a fair 
 hearing. 
 
 In the early thirties, even before the Transcendental 
 spirit had really asserted itself, we find the young enthusi- 
 asts studying Goethe eagerly and with critical eye. James 
 Freeman Clarke and Margaret Fuller were attracted to 
 Goethe at about the same time, principally by the articles 
 of Carlyle; and Frederick Henry Hedge tried to interest 
 Emerson in German literature as early as 1828. That 
 quick progress was made is shown by the fact that within 
 a year Margaret Fuller had read the "Faust," "Tasso," 
 "Iphigenie," "Hermann und Dorothea," "Elective Affini- 
 ties," and "Memoirs," and that by 1834 J. F. Clarke had 
 written an article on Goethe and Carlyle, which Emerson 
 read "with great pleasure and a feeling of gratitude, at 
 the same time with a serious regret that it was not pub- 
 lished.""'' The judgment of F. H. Hedge on things Ger- 
 man was doubtless that of an authority among the young 
 Transcendentalists. He had accompanied George Ban- 
 croft to Germany in 1818, had studied there, and was one 
 of the few members of the Transcendental group who 
 possessed a really adequate knowledge of the German 
 language. He was one of the staunchest defenders of 
 Goethe in New England. 
 
 In Margaret Fuller Goethe had his most intelligent 
 disciple in the new world.'* Though not in all strictness 
 a devotee of the pure Transcendental doctrine, her place 
 in American literature is in and of the Movement. Goethe 
 was her liberator and he became the "guiding-star" of 
 her life. "My parent," she called him. From him she 
 learned the art of self-culture, of individual and har- 
 monious growth. She studied all of his works and all 
 
GOETHE IN NEW ENGIvAND. 59 
 
 of the writings upon them whicli she could procure. She 
 ti-anslated the "Tasso" (1834) and the first two volumes 
 of Eckermann's "Gesprache" (1839), and at the time of 
 her death was collecting material for a Life of Goethe. 
 Her two famous articles, one of which was a spirited 
 answer to Menzel's criticism, appeared in the Dial in 
 1840-41, of which she was editor and leading-spirit. She 
 characterizes Goethe as a man of marvelous attainment, 
 as one whose mind "had embraced the universe," an 
 artist and master, but nevertheless one who failed of the 
 highest achievement. "He might have been a priest; 
 he is only a sage," for the world-to his purposes was only 
 an "arena or a studio, not a temple." A student of life 
 and nature he fulfilled his mission as their recorder, and 
 hence is the "best instructor in the use of means, but not 
 ends," a "poetic-artist" not a "prophet-poet," a "listener 
 to nature, not a priest to the soul of nature." He was 
 cheerful, true, and above all industrious, as his sixty 
 volumes of labor attest; not a mere epicurean or a sen- 
 sualist, if we consider his life as a whole, but rather one 
 who loved "symmetry in external relations" and hence 
 preferred "outward peace rather than inward joy." When 
 he came to the parting of the ways — and to Margaret 
 Fuller this was the renunciation of his love for Lili — he 
 chose the "worldly-way." "From that era dates his being 
 as a 'Weltweise ;' the heroic element vanished irrecover- 
 ably from his character; he became an epicurean and a 
 realist; plucking flowers and hammering stones instead 
 
 of looking at the stars He was right as a genius, 
 
 wrong as a character." There is much of self-contradic- 
 tion in Margaret Fuller's statements, due probably to 
 different moods of thought and expression and betraying 
 an uncertainty of definite judgment. This latter is to be 
 met in almost all the critical opinions of the time, and 
 itself is due perhaps to continual controversy in the critic's 
 mind between his artistic sense and puritanic severity. 
 
6o KMURSON AND COfiTHE. 
 
 In much the same vein was Theodore Parker's criti- 
 cism of the German poet. Parker's reading of Goethe 
 was, we are told,^^ a deliberate exploration of his life 
 aiid character. One of the most indefatigable students 
 and omnivorous readers among the Transcendentalists, 
 he was also among the most forceful and fearless per- 
 sonalities, a man of strong character, sturdy thought, and 
 decidedly original opinions. He yielded at once to Goethe 
 the scholar and read with amazement the "compact, sys- 
 tematic, vigorous" learning of the "Farbenlehre," and 
 admired his lyrics and his other poems — " 'Hermann und 
 Dorothea,' my especial favorite" — but to him Goethe was 
 an "Artist, not a man." There came "no warm beat out 
 
 of his heart He never seems to have looked on men 
 
 as brothers, (and) viewed things as things to minister 
 to his pleasure; second, as objects of art His per- 
 fect artistic skill is wonderful. In his finished works 
 there is scarcely anything in bad taste." Again : "He was 
 a great Pagan. His aim was to educate Herr Goethe. 
 He leads one to labor, but not for the highest, not by 
 
 any means for others Excess of good fortune was 
 
 his undoing.'' Parker admired Goethe's "untiring indus- 
 try," his power of observation and constant aim in study 
 to find "the principle that showed itself in the result," 
 but was pained by the "multiplicity of Goethe's love- 
 affairs," which tended to make his life "unworthy of such 
 a genius." Although to him less a man than Voltaire, 
 less earnest, less humane, less intellectual by far, and 
 exerting a lesser influence on humanity, Goethe was 
 "wise, wide, full of practical sagacity, always the man of 
 generous views, with little heart, except for his artistic 
 creations. He has a wide range rather than a lofty flight. 
 I admire his activity, his cheerfulness and his elegant 
 self-reliance. Now and then he has a deep insight. But 
 it seems to me that he is over-conscious of the process 
 of his work." 
 
COETHB; in new ENGLAND. 6 1 
 
 Alcott, too, reflected the general Transcendental atti- 
 tude.^" He termed Goethe that one of "modern scholars" 
 who more than any other stimulated his readers to pry 
 into the mystery of Nature. "Nature vouchsafed him the 
 privilege of reading her secrets," but he had no free en- 
 trance into the sublime unity of all things. His was not 
 the highest type of poetic vision. "All he was, his Faust 
 celebrates- — admitted to Heaven, as Goethe to- glory, with- 
 out the fee that opens honestly its gates O ! Artist 
 
 of beauty! Couldst thou but have been equal to portray 
 the Spirit of Spirits as cunningly as of Matter. But it 
 was the temper of the age of transition, and thou wast 
 its priest and poet." 
 
 In our judgment of the above critical opinions we 
 must not be too severe. These critics had meagre oppor- 
 tunity for careful study of either Goethe's works or life ; 
 to them he was still much of a contemporary, and they 
 were able to find very little material which gave therh an 
 unbiased, objective way of approach to his writings. 
 Most of the works which they were able to consult were 
 unsatisfactory; and the extravagant praise on the one 
 hand and the acrid condemnation on the other could only 
 elicit on their part a portrait of Goethe colored by their 
 own taste and temper. Aside from this, one must recall 
 that they had not only slight first-hand knowledge of 
 Goethe, but that they for the most part had only scant 
 preparation in the German language and were little con- 
 versant with the tone of a foreign civilization. In the 
 main both Transcendentalists and non-Transcendentalists 
 approached the subject from a puritanically-restricted 
 ethical point of view, and their judgment was marred in 
 this respect by their inability to understand the larger 
 ethical significance of the Goethean philosophy of life. 
 There was universal admiration for Goethe's marvelous 
 and untiring industry and versatility, his zeal to know, 
 his mastery of knowledge, and his powers of assimilation 
 
62 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 and expression; his cheerfulness, practical sagacity, tol- 
 erance, easy self-reliance, and courage to be himself. 
 Here the student in them paid respect to the individualist 
 and sage. But the puritan in them condemned his seem- 
 ing lack of moral conscience, both in regard to his own 
 life and the lives of his artistic creations. There were, 
 indeed, some, we are informed, who went so far as to 
 think themselves "doing honor to the Bible by comparing 
 it to Goethe,"^' but on the whole the attitude was rather 
 one of "qualified admiration." Moreover their demo- 
 cratic American nature was rebuffed by his apparent in- 
 difference to the great political problems of his day. The 
 Transcendentalists, going forth from an ethical, romantic 
 philosophy, criticised in much the same manner as the 
 European Romanticists, though always with an ethical 
 consideration. To them he was preeminently an artist 
 and reaHst, a recorder of nature and human life, but not 
 in the noblest sense a poet. In them were united the 
 critical attitudes of the idealist, the puritan, and the demo- 
 crat, and hence one finds in their statements reminiscences 
 of both the German Romantic and the "Young German" 
 criticism, just as one has found both of these influences 
 at work in the community. His genius, they held, was 
 that of intellect rather than that of character, and hence 
 inferior, and so they failed for the most part to com- 
 prehend his significance as a creative-artist. Though 
 they were unwilling to concede to him all the eulogy of a 
 Carlyle, they were even less willing to accede unreserved- 
 ly to the opprobrium of a Menzel or a Ware. From a re- 
 ligious standpoint the distinction was that of the puritan 
 versus the Hellenist; philosophically, it was that of the 
 idealist versus the realist, the transcendentalist versus the 
 empiricist ; politically, it was that of the republican versus 
 the aristocrat and monarchist. Parke Godwin, reviewing 
 Lewes's "Life of Goethe" in Putnam's Magazine in 1856, 
 reflects the general attitude well. He characterizes Goethe 
 
GOETHIJ IN NEW ENGLAND. 63 
 
 as the artist of his age, but with the following qualifica- 
 tion: "Neither he nor his age felt that out of the heart 
 are the issues of life ; that goodness is greater than truth ; 
 that affection is better than culture ; that wisdom is only- 
 wisdom in so far as it is a manifestation of love." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 I — Emerson's Reading of Goethe. 
 
 Emerson's early education was typical of the- New 
 England temper and true to the family tradition and ideal. 
 For generations the Emersons had been noteworthy mem- 
 bers of the intellectual and clerical aristocracy, strong 
 and sound mentally and morally, devout, cultured, self- 
 reliant. They were men of ready practical sense as well 
 as of nobility of spirit and of sterling independence in 
 thought and act. There was in them not a little of the 
 old Calvinistic austerity, a tendency which was liberal- 
 ized by the more' tolerant influences of Unitarianism and 
 expressed itself in the suave and polished discourses of 
 the Reverend William Emerson, Ralph Waldo's father. 
 The mother's family was less robust, less acute perhaps 
 mentally, but touched with a mystic or pietistic quality, 
 remarkable for its spirituality of temperament and re- 
 ligious zeal. Both sides were happily united in Emerson 
 and were evident from the very first. 
 
 He showed an early and sturdy mental independence 
 and a vigorous determination to make his own way. The 
 wisdom of self-denial was soon experienced and proved, 
 and an inviolable trust in the Moralrsentiment was an 
 early acquirement, perhaps, rather an inheritance. Soli- 
 tude and contemplation were marked traits of the boy as 
 of the man, and books, especially those of his own choos- 
 ing, were the nourishment of his mental life. His course 
 at Harvard College, which he entered in 1817, brought 
 
READING OF COETHi;. 65 
 
 him no particular distinction. He was a fair but by no 
 means an exceptional student, and preferred to follow his 
 own interests in study to those of the prescribed course. 
 He was an attentive observer and an eager reader, re- 
 tiring in disposition, . but mostly active among his own 
 chosen group of friends. He attended the lectures of 
 Ticknor and almost idolized Edward Everett, whom he 
 mentions as opening up "a new morning" to his students 
 by the introduction of the wealth of German criticism. 
 "A chamber alone" was in his own words the prime ad- 
 vantage which his college-life afforded him; for it was 
 in the solitude of his own room rather than among his 
 fellows that the character of his mind was developed. The 
 "notebooks" and "journals," which the young student 
 kept while at college and which were continued through- 
 out the greater part of his life, into which he was accus- 
 tomed to note sundry events and opinions and in this 
 manner bring clarity to his views, are to us a mirror of 
 his mental growth, its struggles and problems, its manly 
 independence, and noble tolerance and acceptance of 
 whatever was good and true. 
 
 The years that passed between his graduation in 1821 
 and the pubHcation of his first effort, "Nature," in 1836, 
 were years in which the spirit was reaching out and be- 
 ginning to assert itself. It was a period of reception and 
 preparation, of wide reading and assimilation. Immedi- 
 ately after leaving college Emerson took charge of his 
 brother William's school, which he left in 1823 to pursue 
 studies in the Divinity School at Cambridge largely under 
 the direction of William Ellery Channing. In 1826 he 
 was "approbated to preach," but his health soon broke 
 down, and he departed on a visit to the South to recuper- 
 ate. He returned in 1829 and was ordained to assist the 
 Reverend Henry Ware i 1 the Second Church in Boston, 
 of which he soon became pastor. In the same year he 
 married. In 1832, because he found the ministration of 
 
66 F.MKRSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 the communion incompatible with his own religious in- 
 stinct and because of the consequent disagreement with 
 his congregation on a question of dogma against the 
 literal interpretation of which his whole being rebelled, 
 he resigned his charge, and late in 1832, after the death 
 of his wife, went on a trip to Europe. He visited Italy, 
 France, and England, and met Landor, Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, and above all Carlyle. Upon his return to 
 America he settled with his mother in Concord at the 
 Old Manse, delivered occasional lectures and sermons in 
 the neighboring towns and cities, and worked upon "Na- 
 ture," which appeared in 1836, the first permanent ex- 
 pression of his transcendental philosophy. 
 
 The "Journals" reflect during these formative years 
 the same spiritual influences which we have found opera- 
 tive in the development of Transcendentalism. Of note 
 is the gradual breaking-away from a dogmatic position 
 to one of greater tolerance and optimism, largely under 
 the influence of sympathetic reading of the world's great 
 books and of the idealistic philosophy as presented di- 
 rectly or indirectly in the pages of Wordsworth, Cole- 
 ridge, Carlyle, and especially in the living presence of 
 William Ellery Chamiing. In Channing himself and in 
 his sermons and writings, there was sufficient source of 
 inspiration. Individual assertion became stronger and 
 stronger ; above all things Emerson as a disciple of Chan- 
 ning, determined to have trust in himself and the prompt- 
 ings of the Spirit within him. In 1834 (Nov. 15) he 
 wrote: "Henceforth I design not to utter any speech, 
 poem or book that is not entirely or peculiarly my work. 
 I will say at public lectures and the like, those things 
 which I have meditated for their own sake and not for 
 the first time with a view to that occasion."^* His read- 
 ing was wide and various, but on the whole compara- 
 tively little had a determining influence upon his thought. 
 Those passages which seemed to bear directly upon 
 
READING OF GOETHi;. 67 
 
 problems then puzzling him or to confirm his own thought 
 were noted and often copied in the Journals. Books of 
 a serious intent were his favorites, especially the great 
 expressions of the human mind in its attempts to under- 
 stand and solve the meaning of all things, of the unity 
 in the variety, of the permanent in the transitory, and of 
 the eternity and universality of the Spirit. The Bible, 
 Shakespeare, Plato, Montaigne, Plutarch, among many 
 others, were read with eagerness and profit, and his in- 
 terest in poetry would have led him "to the farthest verge 
 of the green earth to learn what it was or was not.'' (J. 
 II, p. no). 
 
 Emerson probably first came in touch with German 
 thought during his collegiate course at Harvard. He 
 attended the lectures of Ticknor and Everett, both of 
 whom had been students in Germany. He was also an 
 eager reader of the best magazines, such as the Edin- 
 burgh and Quarterly, in the pages of which articles upon 
 German subjects now and then appeared. Among the 
 books which he desired to read in 1821, we find mention 
 of Montaigne's Essays and Mme. deStael's "Germany" 
 (J- Ij P- 358)- The latter was doubtless procured and 
 read, for during the next few years intermittent refer- 
 ences are made to it. Herder's name is mentioned in the 
 reading-list from 1825-26, as is that of deStael. At this 
 time too Emerson was becoming acquainted with Sweden- 
 borg through Sampson Reed's "Growth of the Mind." 
 Closer touch with Germany came when his elder brother 
 William left America to spend a year at Gottingen in 
 study for the ministry. The doubts which beset the 
 brother's mind and led him to renounce his intentions of 
 entering the ministry and thus to reject the family tradi- 
 tion — even against the conventional advice of Goethe, of 
 whom he sought counsel and who told him to resign him- 
 self to the world rather than disappoint the hopes of his 
 family — must have deeply impressed Ralph Waldo and 
 
68 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 strengthened his own determination to study at Divinity 
 College and not to disappoint his mother. This seemingly 
 worldly and practical advice of the old Goethe to the 
 young idealist must have left a none too favorable im- 
 pression upon Emerson's mind and was doubtless often 
 recalled when he later took up the reading of Goethe's 
 works. William soon after his return entered upon the 
 study of law and gave lectures upon German literature 
 in New York. Throughout these years Emerson's .knowl- 
 edge of German culture and life was, we may feel cer- 
 tain, quite casual, in no way subject to a premeditated 
 interest, but merely that of the general reader of the cur- 
 rent periodicals and books of note and worth. In fact, 
 in 1828 Dr. F. H. Hedge, then first making his acquaint- 
 ance, "tried to interest him in German literature, but he 
 laughingly said that as he was entirely ignorant of the 
 subject, he should assume that it was not worth know- 
 jjjg_"3o J,-^ 1829, as has been previously noted, he was 
 reading Coleridge and thus becoming better acquainted 
 with the spirit of German idealism. He read the "Friend," 
 the "Aids to Reflection," and the "Biographia Literaria,'' 
 and of these works seems to have placed most value upon 
 the latter. In 1871 he said of this work: "that he did 
 not see how a young scholar could do without it; and 
 praised his definition of Genius, Reason, Imagination, and 
 Fancy."*" Carlyle steered like a meteor across his hori- 
 zon in 1829-30, and the Essays as they appeared in the 
 various magazines intensified any interest he may have 
 had in things German, and above all introduced him to 
 Goethe. Emerson, like almost all the contemporary stu- 
 dents, owed his interest in Goethe primarily to Carlyle's 
 efforts. In 1830 the "William Meister" in Carlyle'g trans- 
 lation is the first one of Goethe's works to be mentioned 
 in the Journals. Almost immediately notes and extracts 
 from this and other works of Goethe and excerpts from 
 the works of other German writers, notably, Lessing, 
 
READING OF GOETHE. 69 
 
 Schiller, Fichte, Novalis, occur, revealing a quickened 
 interest. Carlyle's Essays, however, are fundamental, 
 for a good many of these notes are taken directly from 
 quotations from the German made by Carlyle and are a 
 substantiation of some cherished thought of his own. 
 This holds of the greater part of his reading at that time. 
 In .1831 frequent mention is made of German writers: 
 he reads Coleridge's translation of Schiller's "Wallen- 
 stein," and quotes from Schlegel's "Guesses at Truth." 
 (J. II, 401). Schelling, deStael, Novalis, and Coleridge 
 also find mention, and in 1832 Hegel and Jung-Stilling's 
 Autobiography are added to the list. Carlyle's essay on 
 Novalis must have been especially gratifying, for Emer- 
 son and Novalis as moral-idealists and mystic-philoso- 
 phers have very much in common, and one would fain 
 ask whether the former could not have derived, and 
 perhaps did not derive, considerable spiritual comfort 
 from the general tone of this essay and from the meagre 
 but apt selection from Novalis's aphoristic fragments, 
 which it contained. Of all the German writers with 
 whom he became acquainted at that time, however, none 
 impressed him more profoundly than Goethe, so that 
 upon embarking for Europe in 1833, led partly by a 
 desire to meet the three or four English authors whose 
 works he had closely followed in the magazines, he felt 
 as he later confessed, (Wks. V, p. 4) that, '''if Goethe 
 .had still been living, I might have wandered into Ger- 
 many also." 
 
 When Emerson resigned the charge of the Second 
 Church in 1832 and entered upon his first European trip 
 in 1833, the fundamental tenets of his future teaching 
 were already firmly fixed in his mind. He was of the 
 sort that develop slowly but securely. A perfect reli- 
 ance upon the promptings of the Spirit within him and 
 firm self-dependence added to a strong faith in the infal- 
 libility of the universal moral laws were the marked 
 
yo EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 characteristics of his thought. Abstract speculation pos- 
 sessed no charm for him; he was more a poet than a 
 metaphysician. In a poem^^ which we find in the Jour- 
 nals for 1831 (J. II, 395) we find summarized in succinct 
 statement much that has been troubling him from the 
 earliest time, as his Journals show. 
 
 If thou canst bear 
 
 Strong meat of simple truth, 
 
 If thou durst my words compare 
 
 With what thou thinkest in the soul's free youth. 
 
 Then take this fact unto thy soul, — 
 
 God dwells in thee. 
 
 It is no metaphor nor parable, 
 
 It is unknown to thousands, and to thee; 
 
 Yet there is God. 
 
 He is in thy world, 
 
 But thy world knows him not. 
 
 He is the mighty Heart 
 
 From which life's varied pulses part. 
 
 Clouded and shrouded there doth sit 
 
 The Infinite 
 
 Embosomed in a man ; 
 
 And thou art stranger to thy guest. 
 
 And know'st not what thou dost invest. 
 
 The clouds that veil his life within 
 
 Are thy thick woven webs of sin, 
 
 Which his glory struggling through 
 
 Darkens to thine evil hue. 
 
 Then bear thyself, O man! 
 
 Up to the scale and compass of thy guest; 
 
 Soul of thy soul. 
 
 Be great as doth beseem 
 
 The ambassador who bears 
 
 The royal presence where he goes. 
 
 Give up to thy soul, — 
 
 Let it have its way — 
 
 It is, I tell thee, God himself, 
 
 The selfsame One that rules the Whole, 
 
 Tho' he speaks through thee with a stifled voice. 
 
 And looks through thee, shorn of his beams. 
 
 But if thou listen to his voice, 
 
RKADING OF GOETHE. 71 
 
 If thou obey the royal thoughts, 
 
 It will grow clearer to thine ear, 
 
 More glorious to thine eye. 
 
 The clouds will burst that veil him now 
 
 And thou shalt see the Lord. 
 
 Therefore be great, 
 
 Not proud — too great to be proud. 
 
 Let not thine eyes rove. 
 
 Peep not in corners; let thine eyes 
 
 Look straight before thee, as befits 
 
 The simplicity of Power. 
 
 And in thy closet carry state; 
 
 Filled with light, walk therein; 
 
 And, as a king 
 
 Would do no treason to his own empire. 
 
 So do not thou to thine. 
 
 This is the reason why thou dost recognize 
 
 Things now first revealed, 
 
 Because in thee resides 
 
 The spirit that lives in all; 
 
 And thou canst learn the laws of nature 
 
 Because its author is latent in thy breast. 
 
 Therefore, O happy youth, 
 
 Happy if thou dost know and love this truth, 
 
 Thou art unto thyself a law. 
 
 And since the soul of things is in thee. 
 
 The law, the gospel, and the Providence, 
 
 Heaven, Hell, the Judgment and the stores 
 
 Immeasurable of Truth and Good, 
 
 All these thou must find 
 
 Within thy single mind. 
 
 Or never find. 
 
 Thou art the law; 
 
 The gospel has no revelation 
 
 Of peace or hope until there is response 
 
 From the deep chambers of thy mind thereto, — 
 
 The rest is straw. 
 
 It can reveal no truth unknown before. 
 
 The Promdence 
 
 Thou art thyself that doth dispense 
 
 Wealth to thy work, want to thy sloth, 
 
 Glory to goodness, to neglect, the moth. 
 
72 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 Thou sowest the wind, the whirlwind reapest, 
 
 Thou payest the wages 
 
 Of thy own work, through all ages. 
 
 The almighty energy within 
 
 Crowneth virtue, curseth sin. 
 
 Virtue sees by its own light; 
 
 Stumbleth sin in self-made night. 
 
 Who approves thee doing right? 
 
 God in thee. 
 
 Who condemns thee doing wrong? 
 
 God in thee. 
 
 Who punishes thine evil deed ? 
 
 God in thee. 
 
 What is thine evil need? 
 
 Thy worse mind, with error blind 
 
 And more prone to evil 
 
 That is, the greater hiding of the God within, 
 
 And next, the consequence 
 
 More faintly, as more distant, wrought 
 
 Upon our outward fortunes. 
 
 There is nothing else but God. 
 
 Where'er I look 
 
 All things hasten back to him ; 
 
 Light is but his shadow dim. 
 
 Shall I ask wealth or power of God, who gave 
 
 An image of himself to be my soul? 
 
 As well might swelling ocean ask a wave, 
 
 Or the starred firmament a dying coal, — 
 
 For that which is in me lives in the whole. 
 
 (J. II, 395 ff.) 
 
 Here are to be found in the germ five years before 
 the publication of "Nature" important ideas which later 
 received more complete expression in the "Essays," such 
 as those of the Over-soul, Self-reliance, the Moral-senti- 
 ment, and Compensation — all fruits of the seed sown at 
 an earlier date by William Ellery Channing. 
 
 Now those authors who gave confirmation to these 
 thoughts Emerson quoted and cherished ; others he se- 
 verely criticised and put aside. To the former belonged 
 Carlyle, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and the Germans, and 
 
EI:ADING of GOETHE. 73 
 
 thus most of the quotations from these latter before 1833 
 bear directly upon some one of the above-mentioned 
 ideas. The excerpts from Goethe too are of this nature, 
 and those are given which illustrate his belief in man's 
 spiritual dependence and touch upon his great power of 
 observation and assimilation. (J. II, 348-349).*^ It is 
 interesting to note that among the first to be found is the 
 extract on the three religions from the "Wanderjahre," 
 doubtless taken directly from Carlyle's essay. 
 
 During his first European trip, in 1833, Emerson read 
 the "Italienische Reise" and the "Wilhelm Meister" at 
 odd moments. We find him in Naples noting in his diary 
 on March 16: "Last night stayed at home at my black 
 lodging in the Croci di Malta and read Goethe" (J. Ill, 
 66), and remarking upon Goethe's impressions of Naples. 
 In Florence, too, later in May, he was glad to be left "to 
 Goethe and Sismondi, to pleasant study hours and to sound 
 sleep." (J. Ill, p. 124). Emerson returned from Europe 
 in better health and with new and cheerful faith in the 
 future of his own country and its institutions. As a 
 traveller he was never able to get away from himself, and 
 his future mission as "a friend and aider of those who 
 would live in the spirit," must have dawned upon him 
 when on his return-journey he wrote in his Journal at 
 sea : "The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man 
 with himself. He is not to live to the future as described 
 to him, but to live to the real future by living to the real 
 present. The highest revelation is that God is in every 
 man." (J. Ill, p. 201). Settled in Concord, this new 
 life opened up to him, and as public-lecturer, thinker, and 
 man of culture, he became within a few years the rec- 
 ognized mouthpiece of the Transcendental group, poet 
 and prophet of the Soul. 
 
 The years 1834-40 mark his most active interest in 
 Goethe as poet and man. During this time, as we re- 
 member, the Goethe cult was quite strong in New Eng- 
 
74 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 land. The German language was being studied and Ger- 
 man literature and music were finding ready appreciation 
 in and about Boston. The articles upon Goethe were 
 appearing in the magazines, and in 1836 The Transcen- 
 dental Club, of which Emerson was a member, held its 
 first meeting, and we may feel certain that Goethe and 
 his works were' not infrequently discussed there. The 
 general interest in Goethe and the enthusiasm of his 
 friend, Carlyle, doubtless spurred Emerson on to a more 
 careful and critical reading. He studied German in order 
 to read Goethe in the original and acquired, at least to 
 some degree, a reading knowledge of the language. Ger- 
 man, however, never became easy for him to read. (Wks. 
 IV, p. 370). We find him as late as 1871, while crossing 
 Illinois on the trip to California, reading Goethe's 
 "Spriiche in Prosa" with the help of "a little German 
 dictionary" — "He found it excellent time to study his 
 German in the cars."*" But this was long after his most 
 active period of German study. In 1836 we find that he 
 possessed in his library the "Nachgelassene Werke" in 
 55 leather-bound doudecimo volumes, printed at Stuttgart 
 and Tiibingen (Cotta) in 1832, and in the same year he 
 wrote to Carlyle: "I read Goethe, and now lately the 
 posthumous volumes with great interest." Alcott, Hedge, 
 J. F. Clarke, and Margaret Fuller were his friends, and 
 all were eager students of Goethe. 
 
 The Journals for 1834-1836 refiect these influences. 
 Goethe, the writer and poet, the man of practical wisdom, 
 is the recipient of praise and admiration, whereas Goethe 
 the "man of the world," the Olympian and egoist, is cen- 
 sured in harshest terms. We read of the "wise but sen- 
 sual, loved and hated Goethe." (J. IV, p. 28 ff). Much 
 that was written during these years found its way later 
 into the Essays and lectures and was restated at about 
 the same time in the letters to Carlyle.** Not only were 
 Goethe's works read, but many other books bearing di- 
 
READING OF GOETHE. 75 
 
 rectly or indirectly upon the German poet. Schiller, 
 Novalis, Herder, Fichte, Tieck, Lessing, Schleiermacher, 
 Schlegel, Schelling, Richter, Wieland, Borne, Winckel- 
 mann, were among the German writers whose names 
 found their way into the Journals. Goethe's correspond- 
 ence with Herder, Schiller, Zelter, Merck, Bettine von 
 Arnim, was evidently more or less familiar to him, and 
 he was acquainted with Eckermann and the critical efforts 
 of Sarah Austin, J. Dwight, and Margaret Fuller. In 
 1838 he considered writing an article on Goethe — "It 
 would give me new scope to write on topics proper to 
 this age and read discourses on Goethe, Carlyle, Words- 
 worth, Canova, Thorwaldsen, Tennyson." (J. V, p. 17). 
 In September of the same year we find the first note 
 of a failing warmth of interest. "But Goethe, Schleier- 
 macher, lie at home unread. Many books are not as good 
 as a few. Once, a youth at college, with what joy and 
 profit I read the Edinburgh Review. Now, a man, the 
 Edinburgh Review, and lieeren, and Blackwood, and 
 Goethe get a languid attention." (J. V, p. 37). He seems 
 to have come to prefer those works which contained 
 Goethe's "wisdom" in straightforward, aphoristic state- 
 ment, and he invariably took along a volume of this nature 
 on his lecture tours. "So in travelling, how grateful at 
 taverns is Goethe!" (J.. V, p. 45). In 1840 he wrote to 
 Carlyle: "You ask me if I read German and I forget 
 if I have answered. I have contrived to read almost 
 every volume of Goethe, and I have 55, but I have read 
 nothing else; but I have not now looked into Goethe for 
 a long time. There is no great need that I should dis- 
 course to you on books, least of all on his books ; but in 
 a lecture on Literature, in my course last winter, I blurted 
 out all my nonsense on that subject, and who knows but 
 jMargaret Fuller may be glad to print it and send it to 
 you?"*^ He here refers to the Lecture on Modern Lit- 
 erature which was published in the Dial in 1840 and con- 
 
76 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 tains his first published statement on Goethe. It was 
 also probably at this time that the verses, "Written in a 
 volume of Goethe" (Wks. IX, p. 373), were penned, 
 which show his preference for the study of life and nature 
 to that of books. 
 
 "Six thankful weeks, — and let it be 
 A meter of prosperity, — 
 In my coat I bore this book, 
 And seldom therein could I look, 
 For I had too much to think. 
 Heaven and earth to eat and drink. 
 Is he hapless who can spare 
 In his plenty things so rare?" 
 
 And in the essay on "Experience" in the second series, 
 which was published in 1844, is to be found this state- 
 ment of his literary preferences : "Once I took such 
 delight in Montaigne, that I thought I should not need 
 any other book; before that, in Shakespeare; then in 
 Plutarch ; then in Plotinus ; at one time in Bacon ; after- 
 wards in Goethe ; even in Bettine ; but now I turn the 
 pages of either of them languidly, whilst I still cherish 
 their genius." (Wks. Ill, p. 55). 
 
 In the journals after 1840 there is a gradual falling- 
 off in the mention of and citations from Goethe. In his 
 essay of that year his views were correlated and ex- 
 pressed, and he was enabled henceforth to adopt a calmer 
 and less partial position. His admiration for Goethe's 
 genius is less restricted ; he seeks rather to fix his place 
 historically as a cultural force. His censure has lost its 
 sting, and a mellower temper is apparent in his attitude. 
 The intense bitterness which characterized many of his 
 statements in the earlier Journals and the Carlyle-corre- 
 spondence has disappeared, for Emerson is no longer 
 actively wrestling with Goethe's genius. He has found 
 in him a wise man and prizes him as such, and having 
 fixed him in his niche, so to speak, his mind is no longer 
 
KEADING Of GOETHE. 77 
 
 busily engaged with the German poet. To be sure, he at 
 times rises in defense of Goethe against the latter's 
 prejudiced and ignorant detractors, but the former in- 
 tensity of interest never reasserts itself. In 1841 he 
 read Menzel in Felton's translation and his opinion of 
 the work must have been similar to that of Margaret 
 Fuller and Theodore Parker, for he notes (Nov. 13) : 
 "I surprised you, O Waldo Emerson, yesterday eve 
 hurrying up one page and down another of a little book 
 of some Menzel, panting and straining after the sense 
 of some mob, better or worse, of German authors. I 
 thought you had known better." (J. VI, p. 125). In the 
 years of study when he was first making Goethe's ac- 
 quaintance and when he was learning to know at first 
 hand the magnitude of Goethe's powers and the rich 
 story of his life, from 1834-1839, there seems to have 
 been a constant struggle in his mind between his judg' 
 ment of Goethe the man, and that of Goethe the phil- 
 osopher. He was torn from one to the other, repelled 
 and attracted, and the two extremes, so diverse and dis- 
 tant, seemed irreconcilable in one and the same individual. 
 As the years passed, however, his admiration for Goethe 
 the constructive thinker, gradually gained precedence, and 
 though he never could prevail, upon himself to approve 
 of Goethe the man, we feel that his aversion was steadily 
 waning. In 1871, writing to Hermann Grimm, he said: 
 "For Goethe I have always an ascending regard."*" 
 
 This honesty of tribute to Goethe's genius is also ex- 
 pressed in the "Representative Men." In the'last months 
 of 1844 and the early months of 1845 Emerson gave no 
 course of lectures in Boston, but spent his time in pre- 
 paring this new series. Napoleon seems to have been 
 the lecture first finished. In September, 1845, he wrote 
 to Carlyle : "I am to read to a society in Boston pres- 
 ently some lectures, — on Plato, or the Philosopher; 
 Swedenborg, or the Mystic; Montaigne, or the Sceptic; 
 
78 EJIERSON AND GOETHK. 
 
 Shakespeare, or the Poet; Napoleon, or the Alan of the 
 World; if I dare, and much lecturing makes us incor- 
 rigibly rash. Perhaps before I end it, my list will be 
 longer, and the measure of presumption overflowed. I 
 may take names less reverend than some of these — but 
 six lectures I have promised. "■*' He began the course in 
 December, 1845, and delivered it in Boston, Providence, 
 and Lowell. As yet there is no mention of "Goethe, or 
 the Writer;" perhaps, Goethe's was one of "names less 
 reverend" which he as yet hesitated to add to the course, 
 but in view of his large knowledge and interest in Goethe 
 we are not surprised to find him included later. The lec- 
 tures were given also in England in 1847-48 and were 
 published in 1850. This essay on Goethe as the Writer 
 is Emerson's final and largest statement on the German 
 poet and testifies to the high regard in which he had come 
 to hold Goethe and also to the latter's prominence in 
 Emerson's literary life. 
 
 His reading of Goethe's works, however, continued. 
 In 1847 he re-read Goethe's autobiography "in a new- 
 translation," and in 1849 h^ wrote: "Bohn's library now 
 furnishes me with a new and portable Plato, as it had 
 already done with a new Goethe." (J. VHI, p. 35). In 
 1871 we have found him carrying the "Spriiche" upon 
 his California trip, and in 1873 he had them on his jour- 
 ney to Egypt.** His interest now lay almost wholly in 
 what so many scholars have termed the "wisdom" of 
 Goethe, and we may feel assured that he had long ceased 
 to react acutely to the life and works of the German seer. 
 He felt Goethe's influence most during those years when 
 the reading and discussion of Goethe were most active in 
 New England, the years when Transcendentalism was at 
 the flower. In 1856 he wrote: "I am coming to do with- 
 out Plato, or Goethe, or Alcott" (J. IX, p. 37), and in 
 after years his Goethe-reading was probably much like 
 renewing an old acquaintanceship, mellow and calm, no 
 
READING OF GOKTHE. 79 
 
 longer full of ardor and warm with inspiration. Indeed, 
 as above stated, he turned the pages languidly, though he 
 still cherished the genius. 
 
 Emerson's interest in Goethe when at its height also 
 led him to collect portraits and engravings of him. Vis- 
 itors to the Emerson home have told us of the prominence 
 given to Goethe in those things which help make up the 
 atmosphere of the study and reveal individual taste and 
 interest — books, pictures, etc. Moncure D. Conway, 
 writing of his visit to Emerson in Eraser's Magazine, 
 
 1864, says in describing Emerson's study: " on the 
 
 mantle were two statuettes of Goethe, of whom there were 
 also engraved portraits on the walls. Afterwards, Emer- 
 son showed me eight or ten portraits of Goethe which he 
 had carefully collected. The next in favor was Dante, of 
 whom he had all the known likenesses "*" Like- 
 nesses of Swedenborg and Montaigne- too decorated the 
 walls. 
 
 In his autobiography^" Conway also relates two inci- 
 dents which show how well-known a name Goethe's was 
 in the Emerson household. "One day when I was with 
 Emerson and his wife he referred to Goethe and I per- 
 ceived that the great German was a sort of bogy to her. 
 She quoted verbatim two sentences from a letter written, 
 to her by her husband before their marriage in which he 
 expressed misgivings about Goethe, beneath whose fine 
 utterances he found "no faith." Emerson was silent and 
 his wife went on in a way almost pathetic to describe 
 
 her need of faith." "By the way, there was a droll 
 
 relic of it (the Goethe cult) in the Emerson hoiisehold ; 
 one of the children — Edith I think — had the fancy to 
 name her handsome cat 'Goethe.' Emerson affected to 
 take it seriously, and once when the cat was in the library 
 and scratched itself, he opened the door and politely 
 said, 'Goethe, you must retire; I don't like your man- 
 ners.' " Such anecdotes may serve to give us an idea of 
 
8o f,me;rson and goethe. 
 
 how intimately associated witli his daily life Goethe"s 
 name came to be, not only intellectually but even as a 
 household-word among the members of his family. 
 
 Ill — 2. Emerson's Opinion of Goethe. 
 
 An analysis of Emerson's two larger statements on 
 Goethe, the one in the "Essay on Modern Literature" of 
 1840 and the other in the "Representative Men" of 1850, 
 reveals in the main a similarity in treatment and result 
 with one essential difference. In the former Goethe is 
 regarded as typically expressive of the literary genius of 
 the age, whereas in the latter he becomes representative 
 not only of his time but also of the genius of the Writer 
 of all times. The latter is a restatement of Emerson's 
 opinion of Goethe as expressed in the earlier essay, with 
 the emphasis placed upon a new point of approach. The 
 "Journals" and the "Carlyle Correspondence" were the 
 sources of many a critical statement that found its way 
 in due time into the essays, for in them and especially 
 in the former, his views were noted and jotted down, one 
 might almost say, in the rough, fresh from tlie reading and 
 consideration of the man and his works. In the public ut- 
 terances the attitude is calmer, more philosophic, and less 
 personal ; there is less puritanic severity and intolerance, 
 and one feels that the author is able to regard his subject 
 with greater objectivity and impartiality. By 1840 his 
 activity in the study of Goethe was already on the wane, 
 as we have seen, and between 1840-45 there was little 
 occasion for a quickened interest. Emerson had acquitted 
 himself nobly in the Essay on Modern Literature, and 
 having here reached certain personally satisfactory con- 
 clusions concerning the relative historical importance of 
 Goethe's genius he was willing to pass on to new matter. 
 But in 1841 appeared Carlyle's lectures on "Heroes and 
 Hero-worship," parts of which Emerson was able to read 
 in manuscript sent by the author. This work was doubt- 
 
OPINION OF goethe;. 8 1 
 
 less an incentive to the "Representative Men," which was 
 begun about 1845. Carlyle's "Heroes" presented Goethe 
 in a new light, as the Man of Letters, placing emphasis 
 upon the universal aspect. "Our chosen specimen of the 
 Hero as Literary Man would be this Goethe. And it 
 were a very pleasant plan for me here to discourse of his 
 heroism ; for I consider him to be a true Hero ; heroic in 
 what he said and did, and perhaps still more in what he 
 did not say and did not do ; to me a noble spectacle ; a 
 great heroic ancient man, speaking and keeping silence as 
 an ancient Hero, in the guise of a most modern, high- 
 bred, high-cultivated Man of Letters ! We have had no 
 such spectacle; no man capable of affording such, for 
 the last hundred and fifty years." But Carlyle found it 
 "worse than useless to attempt to speak of him in this 
 case" at that time: "no impression but a false one could 
 be realized. Him we must leave to future times." So 
 he discoursed upon Johnson, Burns, and Rousseau — 
 "Three men of the Eighteenth Century" who "did not 
 conquer like him; they fought bravely and fell. They 
 were not heroic bringers of the light, but heroic seekers 
 of it." This hint of Carlyle's it may have been, that gave 
 to Emerson a new light in which to approach Goethe, 
 and led him to classify the German poet as representing 
 the "powers and duties of the scholar or writer." 
 
 A consideration of Emerson's judgment of man or 
 book brings us face to face with his critical method. This 
 is in no way that of the painstaking and impartial scholar, 
 bent upon thoughtful examination of fact after fact. 
 With Emerson the personal element is always pronounced, 
 as one would expect from such an extreme individualist. 
 In the Journals, Oct 11, 1839, he writes: "We must 
 learn to judge books by absolute standards. Criticism, 
 too, must be transcendental. Society wishes to assign 
 subjects and method to its writers. But neither it nor 
 you may intermeddle. You cannot reason at will in this 
 
82 EMBRSON AND GODTHi;. 
 
 and that other vein, but only as 3'ou must we sing 
 
 as we are bid." The critic, like the artist, must yield to 
 the call of the Spirit and thus pronounce judgment in the 
 light of the Ideal, the Moral-sentiment. Herein his stand- 
 ard is transcendental, impersonal, ethical, and alone jus- 
 tifiable. " 'Every scripture is to be interpreted by the 
 same spirit which gave it forth' — is the fundamental law 
 of criticism," writes Emerson in "Nature." (W'ks. I, 
 p. 35). To him all , things are mora l and in the JMoral- 
 sentiment all mankind is united in a huge, uni\'ersal bro- 
 therhood, for every individual is a partaker of it. Thus 
 are the greatest equally the wisest and the best, for they 
 possess larger vision and clearer insight into those secret 
 workings of reality which lie hidden behind and beyond 
 the phenomena and the circumstance. "The high poetry 
 of the world from the beginning has been ethical." (J. 
 IV, p. 425), and later he writes: "I think the whole use 
 in literature is moral Morals differ from intellec- 
 tuals in being instantly intelligible to all men." (J. \'II, 
 p. 250). It is the moral world, not the intellectual, then, 
 which unites all men, and this is the basis for the criterion 
 of criticism, whether of man, of book, or of thing. The 
 greatest and best books are to Emerson those Bibles of 
 the world, which "proceed out of the silent living mind 
 to be heard again by the living mind" and are "given by 
 the inspiration of God." "Every composition proceeds 
 out of a greater or less depth of thought, and this is the 
 measure of its effect. The highest class of books are 
 those which express the moral element; the next, works 
 of the imagination; and the next, works of science; — all 
 dealing in realities, — what ought to be, what is, and what 
 appears. These in proportion to the truth and beauty 
 they involve, remain; the rest perish." 
 
 In the Essay on German Literature Carlyle had pre- 
 sented a German conception of the poet or literary man 
 as exemplified in the writings of vSchiller and particularly 
 
OPINION OF COUTHli. 83 
 
 of Fichte. This exalted conception of the Writer was 
 restated in the "Heroes" and is fundamental to Emer- 
 son's criticism. Fichte in conformity with the Transcen- 
 dental philosophy "calls the Man of Letters, therefore, a 
 Prophet, or as he prefers to phrase it, a Priest, continu- 
 ally unfolding the God-like to men : Men of Letters are 
 a perpetual Priesthood, from age to age, teaching all men 
 that God is still present in their life; that all 'Appear- 
 ance,' whatsoever we see in the world, is but as a vesture 
 for the 'Divine Idea of the World' for that which lies at 
 the bottom of Appearance !" It is in this sense that Car- 
 lyle would present Goethe, and with this larger perspective 
 in view Emerson esteems him as the Writer or Secre- 
 tary, the Reporter, the Scholar, at once "the man of the 
 ages" and the man of his time. Carlyle would make no 
 reservation in his eulogy, but in Emerson's approbation 
 there is always a condition. Goethe, he feels, deserves 
 rank with the greatest minds of all times — "The old 
 Eternal Genius who built the world has confided himself 
 more to this man than to any other." But he was too 
 much of his own age to have ascended the highest sum- 
 mit and have known the greatest good. 
 
 To Emerson, Goethe and Napoleon were the two great 
 exponents of the civilization of the 19th century, typical 
 of its activity and tendency, the one in its inner, the other 
 in its outer manifestations. They were the representative 
 men of their age. Carlyle had thus designated them in 
 his essay on Goethe's works. "Of great men in our time 
 there have been Two ; Napoleon, in the practical ; Goethe, 
 in the speculative province" — and the same attitude is ex- 
 pressed in his classification of Napoleon as 'Hero as King,'' 
 and Goethe as 'Hero as Man of Letters' in the "Heroes." 
 Emerson too makes Goethe the representative Writer and 
 Napoleon the representative Man-of-the-World, and 
 writes : "I described Bonaparte as representative of the 
 popular external life and aims of the 19th century. Its 
 
84 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 other half, its poet, is Goethe, a man quite domesticated 
 in the century, breathing its air, enjoying its fruits, im- 
 possible at an earlier time, and taking away, by his colos- 
 sal parts, the reproach of weakness, which, but for him, 
 would lie on the intellectual works of the i)eriod." Goethe 
 was the great ]\Iind, Napoleon the great Hand of the age 
 (J. Ill, p. 148) ; both were "stern realists," representing 
 "the impatience and reaction of nature against the morgue 
 of conventions." They were the pivotal men of their 
 time, for by their efforts the older civilization turned to 
 the new. All before them were ancients. Both were 
 peculiarly the products, as well as the leaders, of their 
 age; in them its weakness and its strength, its vice and 
 its -virtue, were apparent. 
 
 The age that was passing — that is, their age — had 
 been marked, ^^ said Emerson, by an epochal revolution in 
 life and thought. There had come about a democratiza- 
 tion of society and of knowledge. The French Revolu- 
 tion and the Romantic philosophy were the outgrowth of 
 that individual assertion which had characterized the 
 time, and the conception of human brotherhood in the 
 social state was but an outward manifestation of the union 
 of all mankind in the Spirit, in the conception of an all- 
 enveloping Over-Soul. In the material and in the intel- 
 lectual aspects of life there was opportunity for every 
 man. The age was one of great intellectual activity, a 
 searching-out in every direction for more knowledge and 
 for a clearer comprehension of facts, an attentive study 
 of all phases of nature and life, and a bold and systematic 
 criticism. It possessed all books and bred a multitude 
 of writers drawn from every walk of life, and its result 
 proved often a "wide superficial cultivation." "Christen- 
 dom has become a great reading-room ; and its books have 
 the convenient merits of the newspaper, its eminent pro- 
 priety, and its superficial exactness of information." To 
 every man there was granted the privilege of acquainting 
 
OPINION OP GOETIIi;. H5 
 
 himself with the world's wisdom as expressed in the 
 printed pages of its great books and in the living revela- 
 tions of nature. Men were free to observe, to know, to 
 think, and in their speculation there came "an insatiable 
 demand for unity," and a "new consciousness of the one 
 mind" which was omnipresent and discoverable in each 
 of the manifold manifestations of sense. 
 
 The paramount characteristic of the age was its sub- 
 jectivity. "The single soul feels its right to be no longer 
 confounded with numbers, but itself to sit in judgment 
 on history and literature, and to summon all facts and 
 all parties before its tribunal." But there were two ave- 
 nues open to the single soul ; one of complete submission 
 to the divinations of the Spirit within; the other of only 
 partial submission, and thus selfish, private, personal, and 
 dangerous. The former was commendable and alone of 
 value, the latter Emerson termed "vicious subjectivity,'' 
 unhealthy, unsound, and superficial. '"The great man, 
 even whilst he relates a private fact personal to him, is 
 really leading us away from him to a universal experi- 
 ence to nature, and in our age to metapliysical na- 
 ture, to the invisible awful facts, to moral abstractions, 
 which are not less nature than is a river or a coal-mine, 
 nay, they are far more nature — but its essense and soul." 
 
 Another trait of the modern mind, which was indeed 
 buj another aspect of the subjectivity of the age, was 
 the feeling which it possessed of the Infinite. "A wild 
 striving to express a more inward and infinite sense," 
 
 says Emerson, "characterizes the works of every act 
 
 This feeling of the Infinite has deeply colored the poetry 
 of the period. This new love of the vast, always native 
 in Germany, was imported into France by deStael, ap- 
 peared in England in Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, 
 Shelley, Felicia Hemans, and finds a most genial climate 
 in the American Mind." In fact what Emerson found as 
 the most significant characteristics of the age were, as 
 
S6 EMDRSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 we have noted, the most conspicuous traits of the Ro- 
 mantic revolt as expressed in the Transcendental phil- 
 osophy. It was in the genius of the German people that 
 this spirit had found best expression, b}' an activity which, 
 "spreading from the poetic into the scientific, religious 
 and philosophical domains," had made theirs the para- 
 mount intellectual influence of the world. Of the Ger- 
 man genius in all its typical ramifications as of the mod- 
 ern mind Goethe was most representative. A man of im- 
 mense culture and of various attainments, he was the one 
 who united in himself all the tendencies of his age, a 
 "poet, naturalist, and philosopher." 
 
 First of all Goethe was one who had gone "the circuit 
 of human knowledge.'' His power of comprehension was 
 all-engrossing. He was at home in the world. His "great 
 sagacity and industry of observation" were nothing short 
 of marvelous; he was the product of the earth as a 
 reading-room. He knew all things and all things gave 
 their contribution to his culture ; he was versatile, at home 
 in the ancient as in the modern civilization ; the thinker, 
 the unifier of the multiplicity, of the "miscellany of facts" 
 of experience. "He seems to see out of every pore of 
 his skin." He was not afraid to live, bravely, generously, 
 cheerfully. His was a manly mind, sincere and genuine, 
 subtle and alert and far-seeing, ever self-reliant and with- 
 out fear. He was the "soul of his century," for he 
 clothed modern existence with poetry, and in every realm 
 of experience "he detected the Genius of life." "He 
 writes in the plainest and lowest tone, omitting a great 
 deal more than he writes, and putting ever a thing for a 
 word."''- As a student of nature he gave utterance to 
 the "best things about Nature that ever were sai<I," and 
 as a scientist his activities extended into the fields of 
 botany, zoology, osteology, optics. "A resolute realist," 
 he was, and "the King of Scholars." "He is the high- 
 priest of the age. He is the truest of all writer^. His 
 
OPINION OF goethh;. 87 
 
 books are all records of what has been lived, and his 
 sentences and words seem to see." One born to observe 
 and to write, a Namer and Sayer, he came destined and 
 endowed by nature for the fulfillment of his great task. 
 He loved the truth and was incessantly active in an "end- 
 less variety of studies with uniform cheerfulness and 
 greatness of mind," lifting the veil froni every object to 
 marvel and to wonder. "Since Shakespeare, there has 
 been no mind of equal compass to his. There is the wise 
 man. He has the largest range of thought, the most 
 catholic mind; a person who has spoke in every science, 
 and has added to the scientific lore of other students, and 
 who represents better than any other individual the pro- 
 gressive mind of the present age. He is the oracle of all 
 the leading students in every nation at this time."'"' 
 
 Again, in complete accord with the spirit of his age 
 Goethe shared in its subjectivity. "He felt his entire 
 right and duty to stand before and try and judge every 
 fact in nature. He thought it necessary to dot round 
 with his pen the entire sphere of knowables ; and for 
 many of his stories, this seems the only reason. Here 
 is a piece of humanity I had hitherto omitted to sketch — 
 take this." Everything was subjected to his subtle in- 
 quiry, and nothing escaped his searching glance. Nor 
 was he satisfied with the surface, but pried always for a 
 reason, an explanation of the fact. "Hence a certain 
 greatness encircles every fact he treats ; for to him it has 
 a soul, an eternal reason why it was so, and not otherwise. 
 This is the secret of that deep realism, which went about 
 among all objects he beheld, to find the cause why they 
 must be what they are." And his favorite task was to 
 find a theory of every institution, custom, art, work of art, 
 which he observed. Like all great minds he gave ever 
 a thing, not a word. From him nothing was hid. "He 
 will realize what you say. He hates to be trifled with, 
 and to be made to say over again some old wife's fable. 
 
."8 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 that has had possession of men's faith these thousand 
 years. He may as well see if it is true as another. He 
 sifts it — I am here, he would say, to be the measure and 
 judge of these things. Why should I take them on 
 trust?" He trusted always in himself, in the assertion 
 of his own genius, and in his search of the Truth, in the 
 final synthesis, his aim was always for fundamentals and 
 eternals. By the door of the finite he approached the in- 
 finite, and in this he was a richer partaker than any other 
 in the commendable subjectivism of his age. 
 
 His mind like that of his countrymen was introver- 
 sive. "What distinguishes Goethe for French and Eng- 
 lish readers is a property which he shares with his nation 
 — a habitual reference to interior truth." In England and 
 America there is a respect for and satisfaction in talent, 
 especially if it is worthily exerted. But Goethe, "the head 
 and body of the German nation, does not speak from 
 talent, but the truth shines through : he is very wise, 
 
 though his talent often veils his wisdom he has the 
 
 formidable independence which converse with truth gives : 
 hear you, or forbear, his fact abides ; and your interest 
 in the writer is not confined to his story, and he dis- 
 missed from memory, when he has performed his task 
 creditably, as a baker when he has left his loaf ; but his 
 work is the least part of him." It is not the man and 
 his poem or story, but his wisdom, the glimpses of truth, 
 the feeling of the infinite that one gets from reading his 
 books, that place him among the great minds of all time 
 and distinguish him as the master-mind of modern times. 
 
 But, said Emerson in impeachment of Goethe, though 
 there was embodied in him the glory and power of the 
 modern mind, he was also tainted by its moral defects 
 and shortcomings. He too was infected by the "vicious 
 subjectivism" of his time. He strove to know, that he 
 himself might benefit. "His is not even devotion to pure 
 truth ; but to truth for the sake of culture. He has aims 
 
OPINION OF GOETH]<;. 89 
 
 no less large than the conquest of universal nature, of 
 universal truth ; to be his portion : a man not to be bribed, 
 nor deceived, nor overawed ; of a stoical self-command 
 and self-denial and having one test for all men — what 
 can you teach me ? All possessions are valued by him for 
 that only; rank, privileges, health, time, being itself." 
 He typified culture, self-culture. He desired all things 
 to converge to himself as a centre. He stood forth, 
 statuesque, with "Olympian self-complacency, the pat- 
 ronising air with which he vouchsafes to tolerate the 
 genius and performances of other mortals." Enemies he 
 had and friends, but such enmity or friendship was to 
 him only a means of enlarging his own wealth of experi- 
 ence and knowledge. He was a colossal egoist. "The 
 daemons sat to him, and the saint who saw the daemons ; 
 and the metaphysical elements took form. 'Piety itself 
 is no aim, but only a means, whereby, through purest in- 
 ward peace, we may attain to highest culture.' " As a 
 man of genius he dwelt alone and "like the mountains 
 pays the tax of snows and silence for elevation." (J. IV, 
 p. 201). 
 
 The law of compensation here too played its role; 
 "there is always a price." For, says Emerson, "This 
 subtle element of egotism in Goethe certainly does not 
 seem to deform his compositions, but to lower the moral 
 influence of the man. He differs from all the great in 
 the total want of frankness. Whoso saw Milton, whoso 
 saw Shakespeare, saw these do their best, and utter their 
 whole heart manlike among their brethren. No man was 
 permitted to call Goethe brother. He hid himself, and 
 worked always to astonish, which is egotism, and there- 
 fore little." Thus Goethe, like Napoleon, fell short of the 
 highest flight of genius. Napoleon fell, said Carlyle, 
 when he changed from Democrat to Aristocrat, when "he 
 apostatised from his old Faith in facts" and took to be- 
 lieving in semblances. And so too in the light of the 
 
90 E-MURSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 ethical ideal Emerson pronounces judgment. "Here was 
 an experiment, under the most favorable conditions, of 
 
 the powers of intellect with conscience'' "He did all 
 
 that in him lay, to live and thrive without moral prin- 
 ciple. It was the nature of things, the eternal law of man 
 and of the world, which baulked and ruined him, and the 
 result, in a million experiments, will be the same. Every 
 experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a 
 
 sensual and selfish aim, will fail Only that good 
 
 profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which 
 serves all men." Both of the typical figures of the demo- 
 cratic tendencies of the 19th century were destined to 
 failure as men of moral force and influence. In both a 
 selfish egoism was the source of their undoing, and as a 
 result character sufifered. Neither worshipped the highest 
 unity; neither was capable of self-surrender to the Moral- 
 sentiment; neither can ever be dear to men. Yet both 
 were men of indefatigable industry and marvelous 
 achievement. "There are nobler strains in poetry than 
 he has sounded," said Emerson of Goethe. "There are 
 writers poorer in talent, whose tone is purer, and more 
 touches the heart." As a man who wished to make the 
 most of himself, he thought, Goethe was right in avoid- 
 ing the strains and pains and horrors of life (J. VIII, p. 
 70), but the error lay in this, that he should have desired 
 to do neither. "That Goethe had not a moral perception 
 proportionate to his other powers, is not then merely a 
 circumstance, as we might relate of a man that he had 
 or had not the sense of time or an eye for colors, but it 
 is the cardinal fact of health or disease ; since, lacking this, 
 he failed in the high sense to be a creator, and with divine 
 enrlowments, drops by irreversible decree into the com- 
 mon history of genius." 
 
 It is from this vantage-ground that Emerson directs 
 hi.> attack. For the genius of Goethe, his industry and 
 \-ersatility, his accomplishment and resourcefulness, he 
 
OPINION OF GOETHE. 9I 
 
 has always words of praise ; but for the Olympian, the 
 egoist, the exponent of culture for the sake of culture, 
 he finds only words of censure, at times cruel and sting- 
 ing, without mercy and full of wrath. In the Journals and 
 letters to Carlyle (1834-40), this attitude is stated fear- 
 lessly, whereas in the public essays and lectures, as 
 already mentioned, it has been to a considerable extent 
 deprived of its sting. Against this Goethe, wherever 
 evident, whether in works or life, his bitterness is inexor- 
 able. He finds it hard to reconcile the great genius of the 
 man with his way of life, and with the stubborn inde- 
 pendence of the democratic American he condemns the 
 courtier and friend of princes. "I cannot read of the 
 jubilee of Goethe, and of such a velvet life, without a 
 sense of incongruity. Genius is out of place when it 
 reposes fifty years on chairs of state, and inhales a con- 
 tinual incense of adulation. Its proper ornaments and 
 relief are poverty and reproach and danger, and if the 
 Grand Duke had cut Goethe's head off, it would have been 
 much better for his fame than retiring to his rooms, after 
 dismissing the obsequious crowds, to arrange tastefully 
 and contemplate their gifts and honorary inscriptions." 
 (J III, p. 251). And again a few days later he notes 
 (Jan., 1834) : "Are not his (Michael Angelo's) struggles 
 and mortifications a more beautiful wreath than the mil- 
 liners made for Goethe?" While reading the "Tag-und- 
 Jahres Hefte" in June, 1834, he makes the following state- 
 ments in the Journal: "The problem is. How shall this 
 soul called Goethe be educated? And whatever he does 
 or whatever befalls him is viewed solely in relation to. its 
 effect upon the development of his mind. Even in the 
 arms of his mistress at Rome he says he studied sculpture 
 and poetry. To husband our admiration is an intellectual 
 temperance indispensable to health. But Goethe was a 
 person who hated words that did not stand for things, 
 and had a' sympathy with everything that existed, and 
 
92 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 therefore never writes without saying something. He 
 will be artist and look at God and man, and the Future 
 and the infinite, as a self-possessed spectator, who be- 
 lieved that what he saw he could delineate. Herder ques- 
 tioned whethei a man thus had the right to affect the 
 god, instead of working with all his heart in his place. 
 Self-cultivation is yet the moral of all that Goethe has 
 writ, and in indolence, intolerance and perversion I think 
 we can spare an olive and a laurel for him. No man has 
 drawn his materials of fiction from so wide a circuit. 
 Very properly he introduces into the machinery of his 
 romance whatever feeling or impulse the most rapt en- 
 thusiast has trusted in. Coincidences, dreams, omen, 
 spiritual impressions, and a habitual religious faith — all 
 these are materials which, as a wise artist, he avails him- 
 self of Nevertheless there is a difference between 
 
 thought and thought, and it is as real a defect in a man 
 not to perceive the right of his moral sentiments to his 
 allegiance, as it is not to be conscious of moral senti- 
 ments. Yet Goethe, with all his fine things about 'Ent- 
 sagen,' can write and print too like Rochester and Ber- 
 anger." (J. HI, p. 310). 
 
 Emerson here states his grounds for criticism. AU- 
 sidedness to him is no excuse for an Epicurean mode of 
 life. "To praise a man for such quality is like praising 
 an observatory for being very, low and massive, and a 
 very good fort. It is riot more the office of man to re- 
 ceive all impressions, than it is to distinguish sharply be- 
 tween them." (J. ni, p. 313). In 1835 (May 13) he 
 
 notes: "Who is capable of a manly friendship? 
 
 We feel an interest in a robust healthful mind, an Alfred, 
 Chaucer, Dante, which Goethe never inspires." (J. Ill, 
 p. 477). And in 1836 (April 26) : "On the whole, what 
 have these German Weimarish art-friends done? They 
 have rejected all the traditions and conventions, have 
 sought to come thereby one step nearer to absolute truth. 
 
OPINION OP GOETHE. 93 
 
 But they still are no nearer than others. I do not draw 
 from them great influence. The heroic, the holy, I lack. 
 They are contemptuous. They fail in sympathy with 
 humanity. The voice of nature they bring me to hear 
 is not divine but ghastly, hard and ironical. They do not 
 illuminate me: they do not edify me. Plutarch's heroes 
 
 cheer, exalt The roots of what is great and high 
 
 must still be in the common life." (J. IV, p. 212 ff.). 
 And feeling this imperfection keenly Emerson could 
 write: "But much I fear that Time, the serene judge, 
 will not be able to make out so good a verdict for Goethe 
 as did and doth Carlyle. I am afraid that under his faith 
 is no-faith, that under his love is love-of-ease. How- 
 ever, his muse is catholic as ever any was." (J. IV, p. 
 
 In the letter to Carlyle of Nov. 20, 1834, Emerson 
 also freely states his dislike of Goethe the Man : — "Then 
 the Puritan in me accepts no apology for bad morals in 
 such as he. We can tolerate vice in a splendid nature 
 whilst that nature is battling with the brute majority 
 in defense of some human principle.^? The sympathy his 
 manhood and his misfortunes call out adopts even his 
 faults; but genius, pampered, acknowledged, crowned, 
 can only retain our sympathy by turning the same force 
 expended against outward enemies now against inward, 
 and carrying forward and planting the standard of 
 Orasmasdes so many leagues farther on into the envious 
 Dark. Failing this, it loses its nature and becomes talent, 
 according to the definition — more skill in attaining vulgar 
 ends^ A certain wonderful friend of mine said that "a 
 false priest is the falsest of false things." But what 
 makes the priest? A cassock? O Diogenes! Or the 
 power (and hence the call) to teach man's duties as they 
 flow from the Superhuman ? Is not he who perceives and 
 proclaims the Superhumanities, he who has once intelli- 
 gently pronounced the words "Self-renunciation," "In- 
 
94 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 visible Leader," "Heavenly Powers of Sorrow," and so 
 
 on, forever the liege of the same? Then to write 
 
 luxuriously is not the same as to live so, but a new and 
 worse offence. It implies an intellectual defect also, the 
 perceiving that the present corrupt condition of human 
 nature (which condition this harlot muse helps to per- 
 petuate) is a temporary and superficial state."''* 
 
 It is to be remembered that these extremely bitter 
 statements were made while Emerson was reading Goethe, 
 before the appearance of Menzel and before the writing 
 of the Essays. They reflect on the whole the attitude of 
 puritan New England, which we have found to have been 
 respectful of Goethe as a sage but hostile to Goethe as a 
 man and artist. That Emerson was at first considerably 
 influenced by the current anti-Goethe sentiment in the 
 community is here evident, although we know that he 
 gradually attained a position of greater tolerance. How- 
 ever, much of this misunderstanding and prejudice always 
 clung to him. The Goethe of the "vicious egoism" and 
 "velvet life," the man-of-the-world and the courtier, the 
 aristocrat, and, above all, Goethe the lover, are the butts 
 of Emerson's attack. That Goethe's various love-affairs, 
 and his frankness of confession in regard to them, were 
 offensive to the puritanic conscience and did much to 
 bring down upon himself the wrath and contempt of the 
 moralists, is quite obvious. Especially severe were they 
 in their condemnation of his relation to Friederike Brion, 
 and with a superior disdain they cast questioning glances 
 at the stories of his relations to Frau von Stein and Chris- 
 tiane Vulpius. In this regard all New England almost 
 was united against him and his detractors found their 
 strongest and most telling weapon. Writing to Carlyle 
 in 1839 (March 19) Emerson says: "To me, a profane 
 man, it was good sport to see the Olympic lover of Fred- 
 erica, Lili, etc., lampooned," and, we remember, Margaret 
 
OPINION O]? GOETHB. 95 
 
 Fuller made the break with L,ili the critical moment of 
 Goethe's career. 
 
 Goethe knew too much of himself, said Emerson, and 
 there was too much of the personal and private in his 
 work; he dwelt too much in the world of sense and too 
 little in that of the Spirit. He lacked the sublime vision. 
 Things and thoughts existed for his benefit rather than 
 he for theirs. And this underlying vice conditioned the 
 "worldly tone of his tales." "It was the infirmity of an 
 admirable scholar, who loved the world out of gratitude; 
 who knew where libraries, galleries, architecture, labora- 
 tories, savans and leisure, were to be had, and who did 
 not quite trust the compensations of poverty and naked- 
 ness." It was this that made him think "dealing habitu- 
 ally with men and affairs essential to the health" (J. VII, 
 p. yj^, that made him "the amateur of all arts, and 
 sciences, and events; artistic but not artist, spiritual but 
 not spiritualistic,"'*'* poetic but not a poet. His genius 
 was so great that it just escaped being among the very 
 greatest, and the pity lies in this that he might have been 
 more. "The criticism, which is not so much spoken as 
 felt in reference to Goethe," wrote Emerson, "instructs 
 Its directly in the hope of literature. We feel that a man 
 gifted like him should not leave the world as he found 
 it. It is true, though somewhat sad, that every fine genius 
 teaches us how to blame himself. Being so much, we can- 
 not forgive him for not being more. When one of these 
 grand monads is incarnated whom nature seems to design 
 for eternal men and draw to her bosom, we think that 
 the old weariness of Europe and Asia, the trivial forms 
 of daily life will now end, and a new morning break on 
 us all. What is Austria? What is England? What is 
 our graduated and petrified social scale of ranks and 
 employments? Shall not a poet redeem us from these 
 idolatries, and pale their legendary lustre before the fires 
 of the Divine Wisdom which burn in his heart? All 
 
96 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 that in our sovereign moments each of us has divined of 
 the powers of thought, all the hints of omnipresence and 
 energy, which we have caught, this man should unfold, 
 and constitute facts." 
 
 How did Goethe answer to this call? How is the 
 world better for his presence? "What load has he lifted 
 from men and women?" He was at home in the world 
 and among the actualities of life. "None was so fit to 
 live, or more heartily enjoyed the game." But he was 
 too content to "spend on common aims his splendid en- 
 dowments, and has declined the office proffered to now 
 and then a man in many centuries in the power of his 
 
 genius, of a Redeemer of the human mind Life 
 
 for him is prettier, easier, wiser, decenter, has a gem or 
 two more on its robe, but its old eternal burden is not re- 
 lieved; no drop of healthier blood flows yet in its veins. 
 Let him pass. Humanity must wait for its physician 
 still at the side of the road, and confess as this man goes 
 out, that they have served it better who assured it out 
 of the innocent hope in their hearts that a Physician 
 will come, than this majestic Artist, with all the treas- 
 uries of wit, of science, and of power at his command." 
 
 But Emerson was not entirely without forbearance in 
 his criticism. He knew that there was "no man without 
 his foible," and he always wished to give Goethe his due. 
 He admired above all Goethe's exquisite poise and self- 
 command, his easy trust in himself. Much of the wanton 
 and prejudiced criticism of him was as abhorrent to 
 Emerson as was the bland and confident praise. Of Mar- 
 garet Fuller he said: "She had that symptom which ap- 
 pears in all students of Goethe, — an ill-dissembled con- 
 tempt of all criticism on him which they hear f i^om others, 
 as if it were totally irrelevant ; .and they are themselves 
 always preparing to say the right word, — a prestige which 
 is allowed, of course, until they do speak; when they 
 have delivered their volley, they pass, like their fore- 
 
oriNioN OP GOETHii;, 97 
 
 goers, to the rear."^'^ Emerson, like others, was con- 
 scious of and understood Goethe's shortcomings, but did 
 not beheve in excusing them or apologising for them, nor 
 did he believe in dwelling on them. He felt Goethe's 
 name to be one so firmly and irretrieveably estabhshed 
 that it "could neither be talked up nor down." (J. VII, 
 p. 474) . Thus, he notes in his Journal in October, 1844 : 
 "P. pleased the Boston people by railing at Goethe in 
 his * B. K. oration, because Goethe was not a New Eng- 
 land Calvinist. If our lovers of greatness and goodness 
 after a local type and standard could expand their scope a 
 little, they would see that a worshiper of truth like Goethe, 
 with his impatience of all falsehood and scorn of hypo- 
 crisy (did he manifest his love of truth and scorn of false- 
 hood to the women whose hearts he broke?) was a far 
 more useful man and incomparably more helpful ally to 
 religion than 10,000 luke-warm church-members who keep 
 all the traditions and leave a tithe of their estates to estab- 
 lish them. But this clergyman should have known that 
 the movement which in America created these Unitarian 
 dissenters, of which he is one, began in the mind of this 
 great man he traduces ; that he is precisely the individual 
 in which the new ideas appeared and opened to their 
 greatest extent and with universal application, which 
 more recently the active scholars in the different depart- 
 ments of science, of state, and of the church have car- 
 ried in parcels and thimblefuls to their petty occasions." 
 
 (J. VI, p. 544). 
 
 Goethe's great labors, his industry, and versatility, 
 were in Emerson's opinion worthy of emulation and of 
 esteem. The critic should deal with the living work. The 
 man's achievement, what he was, not what he failed to 
 be or to do, should occupy men's minds. This is his mean- 
 ing in the lines "to J. W.," which were addressed evi- 
 dently to the Rev. John Weiss, who seems to have dwelt 
 
98 EMERSO^^ AND GOETHE. 
 
 too much on Goethe's failings. (Wks. IX, p. 29 an J 
 414), and are the expression of a man of tolerance and 
 sympathy, not of unfriendliness and criticism. 
 
 "Set not thy foot on graves ; 
 Nor seek to unwind the shroud 
 Which charitable Time 
 And Nature have allowed 
 To wrap the errors of a sage sublime. 
 
 "Set not thy foot on graves ; 
 Care not to strip the dead 
 Of his sad ornament, 
 His myrrh, and wine, and rings. 
 
 "His sheet of lead, 
 And trophies buried; 
 
 Go get them where he got them when alire; 
 As resolutely dig or dive. 
 
 "Life is too short to waste 
 In critic peep or cynic bark, 
 Quarrel or reprimand : 
 'Twill soon be dark; 
 Up ! mind thine own aim, and 
 God speed the mark !" 
 
 Emerson found in Goethe "poet, naturalist, and phil- 
 osopher," all in one. His was a mind which sought to 
 find unity in variety by a study of variety, the infinite in 
 the finite by a study of the finite. His method was essen- 
 tially that of the scientist; his love of truth that of the 
 philosopher; and his manner of expression that of the 
 poet. Nature revealed her secret to him as to no other 
 contemporary, and herein lay his great power of appeal 
 to humanity. "When Goethe says, Nature, love, truth, 
 insight, it is quite another thing than if some one else 
 used those words." (J. 1856). "He treats nature as the 
 old philosophers, as the seven wise masters did — and, with 
 whatever loss of French tabulation and dissection, poetry 
 and humanity remain to us ; and they have some doctoral 
 
OPINION OF GOETHE. 99 
 
 skill. Eyes are better, on the whole, than telescopes or 
 microscopes. He has contributed a key to many parts of 
 nature, through the rare turn for unity and simplicity in 
 his mind." Goethe was great as a naturalist because with 
 this faculty he united the imaginative insight of the poet : 
 thus "his love of Nature has seemed to give new meaning 
 to that word." 
 
 His method of study and bent of mind have made 
 him also a lawgiver in the realm of art. "He has defined 
 art, its scope and laws," but though artistic, was not an 
 artist in the loftiest sense of the term. Margaret Fuller 
 said of him that he had the artist's hand, but not the 
 artist's love of structure. Emerson also felt something 
 of this. "Was it that he knew too much that his sense 
 was microscopic, and interfered with the just perspective, 
 the seeing of the whole? He is fragmentary; a writer 
 of occasional poems, and of an encyclopaedia of sen- 
 tences. When he sits down to write a drama or a tale, he 
 collects and sorts his observations from a hundred sides, 
 and combines them into the body as fitly as he can. A 
 great deal refuses to incorporate; this he adds loosely, 
 as letters of parties, leaves from their journals, or the 
 like. A great deal is still left that will not find any place. 
 This the bookbinder alone can give any cohesion to : and 
 hence, notwithstanding the looseness of many of his 
 works, we have volumes of detacjied paragraphs, aphor- 
 isms, xenien, etc., etc. ."^^ In this criticism, Emerson 
 shows his own predilection for Goethe's aphoristic 
 writings. 
 
 Nor does Emerson concede to Goethe the highest hon- 
 ors of poetic genius; in his praise there is always a re- 
 serve, spoken or unspoken. As a man, his great misfor- 
 tune was that he might have been greater, a fact which 
 according to Emerson was also his serious limitation as 
 a poet. "He is a poet — poet of a prouder laurel than any 
 contemporary, and, under this plague of microscopes 
 
lOO EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 Strikes the harp with a hero's strength and grace." 
 
 But his was never the loftiest flight of the muse. The 
 poet, said Emerson, is one destined to express and inter- 
 pret through the medium of art and by dint of his creative 
 imagination the mysteries of Hfe, "where Being passes 
 into Appearance, and Unity into Variety." His spirit 
 must be cheerful, free, liberating, all-embracing, unselfish. 
 He is the Namer or language-maker, the man of deeper 
 insight, the man of ecstasy, of abandonment to the Spirit ; 
 he has a "new thought, a new experience to unfold ; he 
 will tell us how it was with him, and all men will be 
 richer in his fortune. The experience of each new age 
 requires a new confession and the world seems always 
 waiting for its poet." In this regard, the poet's is "a 
 heart in unison with his time and country." He is the 
 Man of Beauty, the "complete-man," that one "without 
 impediment who sees and handles that which others dream 
 of, traverses the whole scale of experience, and is rep- 
 resentative of man, in virtue of being the largest power 
 to receive and to impart." But the great poet must be 
 all this and more, for there is "a great difference between 
 good poetry and everlasting poetry." (J. H, p. 232). 
 That art is cant and pedantry, he said, which does not 
 make the "poor and uncultivated feel that it addresses 
 them also and brings with it the oracle of conscience." 
 (J. V, p. 88). "Poetry must be affirmative and ideahstic. 
 It is the piety of the intellect." Its success is attained, 
 not when it lulls and satisfies, but when it astonishes and 
 fires with enthusiasm and with new endeavors after the 
 unattainable. "Only that is poetry which cleanses and 
 mans me." Its supreme value is to educate to a height 
 beyond itself, and thus subdue mankind to order and 
 virtue. Its aim is moral. Great poetry is transcendental, 
 and the "inexorable rule in the muse's court — either in- 
 spiration or silence — compels the bard to report only his 
 supreme moments. Much that we call poetry is only polite 
 
OPINION OF GOKTHE. lOI 
 
 verse. Yet even partial ascents to poetry and ideas are 
 forerunners and announce the dawn." The great poet was 
 the one who surrendered himself entirely to the inspira- 
 tion of the Moral-ideal and spoke forth its truths to man. 
 "The great poets are judged by the frame of mind which 
 they induce; and to them, of all men, the severest criti- 
 cism is due," he wrote in the preface to "Parnassus." 
 They could not but be moral and devoid of egoism. They 
 must be Prophet-poets ; in the words of Carlyle, revealers 
 of what we are to do and of what we are to love. Such 
 a one was Milton, who stood erect, commanding, a man 
 among men, and read the laws of the Moral-sentiment to 
 the new-born race. (Wks. XII, p. 253). Such a one 
 too, was Michael Angelo, whom Emerson characterized 
 as a "brother and friend to all who acknowledge 
 the beauty that beams in universal nature, and who 
 seek by labor and self-denial to approach its source in 
 perfect goodness." (Wks. XII, p. 244). And such a one 
 too, if we may digress for a moment, was Emerson him- 
 self, whose poems "lift the reader into a higher region of 
 thought and feeling.""' But not such a one, in his 
 opinion, was Goethe.^'' 
 
 He was rather the supreme exponent of modern poetry 
 which, Emerson said, had become egoistic. (J. II, p. 232). 
 He was too self-conscious, and stands preeminently as the 
 scholar. "For, the scholar is the student of the world, 
 and of what worth the world is, and with what emphasis 
 it accosts the soul of man, such is the worth, such the call 
 of the scholar." (Wks. i, p. 157). His aim was to "paint 
 the Actual as, after years of dreams, it will still appear 
 and reappear to wise men." He would be a "resolute 
 realist" among men and things. He possessed all the qual- 
 ifications of the great poet, except the cardinal virtue, the 
 divine gift, of self-surrender to the Moral-sentiment. He 
 failed to see that the Ideal was truer than the Actual. 
 He "must be set down as the poet of the Actual, not 
 
102 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 &f the Ideal; the poet of limitation, not of possibility, 
 of the world, and not of religion and hope; in short, if 
 we may say so, the poet of prose, and not of poetry. He 
 accepts the base doctrine of Fate, and gleans what strag- 
 gling joys may yet remain out of its ban. He is like a 
 banker or a weaver with a passion for the country; he 
 steals out of the hot streets before sunrise, or after sun- 
 set, on a rare holiday, to get a draft of sweet air and a 
 gaze at the magnificence of summer, but dares not break 
 from his slavery and lead a man's life in a man's rela- 
 tion to nature. In that which should be his own place, 
 he feels like a truant, and is scourged back presently to 
 his task and his cell. Poetry is with Goethe thus ex- 
 ternal, the gilding of the chain, the mitigation of his fate; 
 but the Muse never assays those thunder-tones which 
 cause to vibi'ate the sun and the moon, which dissipate 
 by dreadful melody all this iron net-work of circumstance, 
 and abolish the old heavens and the old earth before 
 the freewill or Godhead of man." 
 
 It is interesting to note, however, that Emerson's 
 admiration and respect for Goethe's genius and power as 
 a poet-philosopher led him to include him among his 
 choice of the five greatest bards of all time. Five, says 
 the Muse, were able to withstand the storms of Time, 
 and they were Homer, Dante, Swedenborg, Shakespeare, 
 and Goethe. 
 
 "I hung my verses in the wind, 
 Time and tide their faults may find. 
 All were winnowed through and through, 
 Five lines lasted sound and true," 
 
 Most readers today are doubtless much surprised to find 
 Swedenborg among these, but we must remember that 
 the Swedish mystic was one of Emerson's favorite writ- 
 ers and that he also found place for him among his Rep- 
 resentative Men. He was cognizant of an "entire want 
 
OPINION OF GOETIIE. IO3 
 
 of poetry" in him, and thought sometimes that for this 
 reason "he will not be read longer," but he was struck 
 and held by the fact that "in his eye the eternal flux of 
 things goes always on, there is no material kernel, only 
 spiritual center" (J. VI, p. 183), and therefore he was a 
 "right poet." Shakespeare, the "best" of poets, was also 
 found wanting by this lofty idealist and for much the 
 same reasons as Goethe. At the end of the essay on 
 Shakespeare we find the following words: "It must be 
 conceded that these are half-views of half-men. The 
 world still wants its poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall 
 not trifle with Shakespeare the player, nor shall grope 
 in graves with Swedenborg the mourner ; but who shall 
 see, speak, and act, with equal inspiration. For knowl- 
 edge will brighten the sunshine; right is more beautiful 
 than private affection; and love is compatible with uni- 
 versal wisdom." 
 
 In the verse on Goethe in the "Solution" the charac- 
 terization is brief and in the main like that in essays. 
 Though sincere as a poet, his are never the great felicities, 
 the miracles of poetry : he is rather the scholar, the 
 bringer of wisdom, the "all-knowing poet" of modern 
 times. 
 
 "In newer days of war and trade, 
 Romance forgot, and faith decayed, 
 When Science armed and g-uided war. 
 And clerks the Janus-gates unbar, 
 When France, where poet never grew, 
 Halved and dealt the globe anew, 
 Goethe, raised o'er joy and strife. 
 Drew the firm lines of Fate and life 
 And brought Olympian wisdom down 
 To court and mart, to gown and town. 
 Stooping, his finger wrote in clay 
 The open secret of today." 
 
 Goethe was always one of Emerson's great names, 
 one of the master-minds, the authorities to whom he 
 looked for aid and confirmation in his own efforts. For 
 
I04 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 Goethe had something to say on every subject worthy of 
 thought; he possessed an eye for the measure of all 
 things, and amongst his "multitudes .of opinions" there 
 were comparatively but "few blunders." He was one 
 who moved "our wonder at the mystery of our life," and 
 his opinions were of greater weight than those of any 
 other. "It is to me very plain that no genius can work 
 with equal effect upon mankind as Goethe, for no intel- 
 ligent young man can read him without finding that his 
 own compositions are immediately modified by his new 
 knowledge." (J. IV, p. 218). In the tabulation of ref- 
 erences which Dr. Holmes made from Emerson's works, 
 we find Goethe occupying fifth place with 62 quotations 
 to his credit, outnumbered only by Shakespeare with 
 112, Napoleon with 84, Plato with 81, and Plutarch with 
 70. Goethe's versatility and perspicacity of intellect were 
 a source of continual wonder to him. "Anything that 
 Goethe said, another might attain to say ; but the pro- 
 fusion of sayings, everyone of which. is good and striking 
 — no man. In these days we rather incline to sniff at 
 men of talent, and at achievements as if the artist cost 
 too much : but when a man can do so many things, when 
 achievement amounts to such a prodigious sum, it grows 
 respectable." (J. VII, p. 176). And Emerson's quota- 
 tions from Goethe, which he scattered throughout his 
 written product rest upon this basis, that here was one 
 who had something to say to men which he could com- 
 mend as of value and authority, for always, says Dr. 
 Holmes, "Emerson quotes to illustrate some original 
 thought of his own, or because another writer's way of 
 thinking falls in with his own, — never with a trivial pur- 
 pose.""" The quotations are always introduced to eluci- 
 date his meaning or drive home his thought. Thus we 
 find them drawn from every field of interest to empha- 
 size laws of art and of moral conduct, laws of nature 
 and of the mind, spiritual and practical counsel, and 
 
OPINION OF goethe;. 105 
 
 whatever may shed more light upon the secrets of Being 
 and give man fuller comprehension of the meaning of 
 human responsibility. 
 
 Emerson was too pronounced an individuaHst to ac- 
 cept Goethe's word unconditionally. Books were his ser- 
 vants, not his masters : his only real authorities were 
 nature and life. He valued Goethe as he valued Plato 
 or Swedenborg, as one whose aim it was to read anew 
 for mankind the old riddle of life in its remoter symbols, 
 to confront the sphinx fearlessly and with perfect 
 equanimity. "I have been reading him these two or 
 three days, and I think him far more lucky than most 
 of his contemporaries at this game. There he sits at the 
 centre of all visibles and knowables, blowing bubble after 
 bubble, so transparent, so round, so coloured that he 
 thinks and you think, they are pretty good miniatures 
 of the All." (J. IV, p. 23 ff.). Now, this too was 
 Emerson's all-absorbing interest, and hence he was able 
 to find in Goethe many a helpful and illuminating thought 
 and welcomed him as one to whom he could turn with 
 comfort and profit. "In Goethe is that sincerity which 
 makes the value of literature and that one voice or one 
 writer who wrote all the good books." (J. 1843). Thus 
 it was a pleasure to find in Goethe many a humbly cher- 
 ished thought and to read there, as he himself put it, "a 
 comment and consent" to his own speculation. "Goethe 
 with his extraordinary breadth of experience and culture, 
 the security with which, like a great continental gentle- 
 man, he looks impartially over all literatures of the 
 mountains, the provinces, and the sea, and avails himself 
 of the best in all, contrasts with the rigor of the English, 
 and the superciliousness and flippancy of the French. 
 This perfect taste, the atistere felicities of his style. It 
 is delightful to find our own thought in so great a man." 
 (J. VI, p. 514). 
 
I06 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 Thus it would be inexpedient to attempt to trace any 
 direct influence of the one man upon the other. That 
 Emerson did derive much from the perusal of Goethe's 
 writings, that he was indebted to him for many a happy 
 inspiration and turn of phrase, and that he wisely ac- 
 cepted many a word of counsel and admonition, no one 
 can well deny ; but it must be remembered that such in- 
 fluence was at any case general and largely unconscious. 
 Emerson went to his library not to find his thought, but 
 rather to assure himself of its validity or inadequacy. 
 As Woodberry has aptly put it : "one follows him into the 
 books he read, not for the sources of his thought, but for 
 the mould of the man himself." Upon whatever he has 
 left there is the indelible Emersonian stamp. 
 
 It was chiefly in his scientific and aesthetic interests 
 that Goethe gave him larger and more positive informa- 
 tion. Indeed Goethe's scientific studies were to him, in 
 the words of his son Edward W. Emerson, "a bridge" 
 to the reading and understanding of the works of the 
 leading scientists of the time."^ In the artistic realm the 
 tendency was to soften the sterner prejudices which had 
 been an inheritance of the old Calvinistic strain and to 
 bring about a more sympathetic and tolerant spirit. 
 "Goethe unlocks the faculties of the artist more than any 
 writer. He teaches us to treat all subjects with greater 
 freedom, and to skip over all obstruction, time, place, 
 name, usage, and come full and strong on the emphasis 
 of the fact." (J. V, p. 222). And earlier in 1833 he 
 wrote : "Goethe laughs at those who force every work of 
 art into the narrow circle of his own prejudices and can- 
 not admire a picture as a picture and a tune as a tune. 
 So I was willing to look at this ballet, as a ballet, and see 
 that it was admirable, but I could not help feeling the 
 while that it were better for mankind if there were no 
 such dancers." (J. Ill, p. 113). Such an attempt to 
 take up a position of greater impartiality and objectivity 
 
THi; INDIVIDUAI, WORKS. 107 
 
 of judgment, to attain a wider tolerance, reflects at once 
 his sincerity and respect for the wide culture of the Ger- 
 man poet and the obdurate puritanic stringency of his own 
 nature. 
 
 But it was doubtless Goethe's untiring energy and 
 devotion to Truth, the example of endless activity and 
 labor which his works furnished, that was of most value 
 to Emerson and gave him greatest inspiration. It was 
 precisely this aspect that Carlyle so forcefully empha- 
 sized. For Goethe was one who brought literature back 
 to its ancient might and dignity. His work seemed hercu- 
 lean and yet he performed it cheerfully, courageously, 
 with steadfastness and perfect self-reliance. "This 
 cheerful labourer, with no external popularity or provo- 
 cation, drawing his motive and his plan from his own 
 breast, tasked himself with stunts for a giant, and, with- 
 out relaxation or rest, except by alternating his pursuits, 
 worked on for eighty years with the steadfastness of his 
 first zeal.'' By this immense productivity Emerson was 
 inspired with courage and a feeling of the "equivalence 
 of all times" and a new faith in the gflory of the present 
 and the future. "The world is young: the former great 
 men call to us affectionately. We too must write Bibles, 
 to unite again the heavens and the earthly world. The 
 secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to 
 realize all that we know ; in the high refinement of mod- 
 ern life, in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact 
 good faith, reality, and a purpose; and first, last, midst, 
 and without end, to honor every truth by use." 
 
 Ill — 3. The; Individual Works. 
 
 An examination of Emerson's written criticisms of 
 Goethe's individual works presents concrete instances of 
 the general attitude as outlined above. The same virtues 
 and vices are emphasized which made him at the same 
 time prize and reject the poet, the scholar, and the man. 
 
I08 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 His opinions are to be found here and there in the Jour- 
 nals, the Essays, and the Correspondence, and also in 
 conversations and lectures as reported and preserved by 
 friends and acquaintances. Among them, his views on 
 the "Meister" and the "Faust" are most illuminating and 
 characteristic, though all help better to focus the salient 
 points of his critical attitude. He found the spirit of all 
 of Goethe's works, "of his biography, of his poems, of 
 his tales," identical, and admired his self-reliant manner 
 and proud disinclination to offer explanation of his 
 thought, his artistic reserve, and firm faith "that the in- 
 telligent reader would come at last, and would thank 
 them." 
 
 We have observed that Emerson was most apprecia- 
 tive of the "wisdom" of Goethe. It was to pluck the 
 fruits of this master-mind that he pursued his long and 
 arduous reading of the great German's writings. What 
 he valued most in a book was not its literary merit, but 
 always its depth of thought, its sincerity and philosophical 
 insight, and its knowledge of facts and of life. He cared 
 but little for its artistic beauty or stylistic mastery, but 
 looked to the content, prizing the idealistic and rejecting 
 the utilitarian. He was in no way a literary critic. His 
 three practical rules of reading were: — (i), "Never read 
 any book that is not a year old." (2) "Never read any 
 but famed books." (3) "Never read any but what you 
 like." (Wks. VH, p. 196). He never was an ardent reader 
 of fiction or paid much heed to the lighter branches of 
 literature. As early as 1826, we find the following entry 
 
 in the Journals : " Let the fictions of chivalry alone. 
 
 Fictions, whether of the theorist or poet, have their 
 value as ornaments, but when they intrude into the place 
 of facts, they do infinite injury, inasmuch as it is only 
 by the perception and comparison of Truth that we can 
 perceive and enjoy the harmonies of the system of 
 
THE INDIVIDVAI, WORKS. IO9 
 
 human destinies which the Deity is accomplishing from 
 age to age." 
 
 He admired Goethe's "Spriiche," and in later years 
 was accustomed to carry them along upon his travels ; 
 we find him reading them on his California trip,"^ and 
 also later upon the Nile (1873)."^ Those maxims and 
 rules of life which were originally written at various 
 times and were later gathered and issued in one volume 
 he considered "one of the most important we possess. "''■' 
 He was fond of the "Italian Journey," and the "Tag- 
 und-Jahres Hefte," because of the great knowledge of 
 life and comment thereon which they contained. He did 
 not like the "Dichtung and Wahrheit," thinking that 
 Goethe knew "altogether too much about himself" (J. 
 Vn, p. 303), and failing to find the work really fulfilling 
 his requirements of an autobiography — ^"An autobiog- 
 raphy should be a book of answers from one individual 
 to the many questions of the time." (J. VH, p. 264). 
 "The book affords slender materials for what would be 
 reckoned with us a "life of Goethe," — a few dates ; no 
 correspondence ; no details of offices or employments ; 
 no light on his marriage ; and, a period of ten years, that 
 should be the most active in his life, after his settlement 
 at Weimar, is sunk in silence. Meantime, certain love- 
 afifairs, that came to nothing, as people say, have the 
 strangest importance : he crowds us with details : — certain 
 whimsical opinions, cosmogonies, and religions of his 
 own invention, and, especially his relations to remarkable 
 minds, and to critical epochs of thought: — these he mag- 
 nifies. His "Daily and Yearly Journal," his "Italian 
 Travels," his "Campaign in France," and the historical 
 part of his "Theory of Colours," have the same interest." 
 Emerson finds too much of Goethe the egoist in his auto- 
 biographical work: the great events and problems of the 
 day are mentioned and of interest, he thinks, only in so 
 far as they have bearing upon the cultural development 
 
I lO EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 of the individual, Goethe. It is not a "true Conversation's 
 Lexicon for earnest men." 
 
 Of "dramatic power, the rarest in Hterature, he has 
 very Httle," writes Emerson of Goethe. Yet he finds 
 words of admiration for the "Tasso," which he probably 
 read only in Margaret Fuller's translation,"" and which 
 he characterizes as a play, the crisis of which, as in life, 
 grows "out of the faults and the conditions of the parties" 
 (J. VI, p. 238), and in another place he writes: — 
 "Goethe's Tasso is very likely to be a pretty fair his- 
 torical portrait, and that is true tragedy. It does not 
 seem to me so genuine when some tyrannous Richard III 
 oppresses and slays a score of innocent persons, as when 
 Antonio and Tasso, both apparently right, wrong each 
 other. One living after the maxims of this world, and 
 consistent and true to them ; the other fired with all divine 
 sentiments, yet grasping also at the pleasures of sense, 
 without submitting to their law. That is a grief we all 
 feel, a knot we cannot untie. Tasso's is no infrequent 
 case in modern biography. A man of genius, of an 
 ardent temperament, reckless of physical laws, self-in- 
 dulgent, becomes presently unfortunate, querulous, a 'dis- 
 comfortable cousin,' a thorn to himself and to others." 
 (Wks. II, p. 232). Emerson seems, indeed, to have ap- 
 preciated most sympathetically the temperamental anti- 
 mony of the conflict of the drama. 
 
 The "Iphigenie" was to him "a pleasing, moving, even 
 heroic work," but its greatest weakness lay in that it was 
 an "imitation of the antique," a modern-antique — Car- 
 lyle uses the same term in his "Helena" Essay — "like 
 Landor's 'Pericles' or Wieland's 'Abderites' or Coleridge's 
 'Ancient Mariner' or Scott's 'Lay of the Last Minstrel'." 
 These were in his estimation "paste-jewels," not genuine; 
 and he asked : — "How can a great genius endure to make 
 paste- jewels?" (J. VI, p. 400; IV, p. 34). Emerson evi- 
 dently missed the deeper, spiritual element which dis- 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL WORKS. Ill 
 
 tinguishes this work from its Greek predecessors, and 
 which Felton, as we have noted, pointed out in his re- 
 view. He seems to have preferred the Ancients. Mar- 
 garet Fuller with truer artistic sympathy termed it "a 
 work beyond the possibility of negation ; a work where a 
 religious meaning not only pierces but enfolds the 
 whole.'"*" 
 
 Of ail Goethe's works that which was most misun- 
 derstood and subjected to the most abusive criticism was 
 doubtless the "Elective Affinities." Some few, as for in- 
 stance, F. H. Hedge and Margaret Fuller, appreciated 
 the deeper moral import of the work, but to most readers 
 — even to most admirers of Goethe — it was a, stumbling 
 block, the supreme example of a depraved, immoral mind. 
 Hedge considered it as illustrative of "the ethics of mar- 
 ried life, the mischief of illconsidered and unequal tastes, 
 and the terrible consequences of even mental infidelity 
 to the marriage vow," and Margaret Fuller called it a 
 work of art, "moral in its outward effect and religious 
 even to piety in its spirit." Many found it the natural 
 product of a mind which esteemed intellect above moral- 
 being. The critic in the New York Review (1839) 
 termed it "a moral monster" — "a proof of mental rather 
 than moral obliquity, a distorted picture drawn by one 
 accustomed to treat the intellectual physically, to regard 
 virtue and vice, happiness and anguish, bad passions and 
 holy impulses purely as phenomena," whereas G. Ban- 
 croft writing much earlier rejoiced that "in the U. S., 
 thanks to the venerated sanctity of domestic attachment 
 the book would be thrown aside with incredulity as a 
 false and dangerous libel on human nature." Wm. Ware 
 in his most vituperative article on Goethe, was certain 
 in his consideration of the work, "that Goethe not only 
 had no morals, but scarcely a knowledge of what morality 
 consists in." Emerson's remarks show that he was neither 
 blind to. its deeper import nor free from the suspicion 
 
112 UMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 that it were better unread. His feeling toward it was 
 doubtless one of repulsion. "He (Emerson) said that 
 Goethe had written some things — "Elective Affinities" for 
 instance — which could be readily read only by minds 
 which had undergone individual training. He was the 
 only great writer who had turned upon the moral con- 
 ventions and demanded by what right they claimed to 
 control his life.""" 
 
 "Wilhelm Meister,'' thanks to the timely translation 
 of Carlyle, was one of the best-known and probably the 
 most read of Goethe's works in England and America. 
 It was the recipient in some cases of abuse scarcely less 
 trenchant, than that heaped upon the "Wahlverwand- 
 schaften." Wordsworth, Emerson tells us, (Wks. V, p. 
 21 ) "proceeded to abuse Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister" 
 
 heartily He had never gone farther than the first 
 
 part; so disgusted was he that he threw the book across 
 the room. I deprecated his wrath, and said what I could 
 for the better parts of the book, and he courteously prom- 
 ised to look at it again." De Quincey"^ too was especially 
 ironic in his essay upon the novel, and, of the Americans, 
 Wm. Ware, as one would expect, was again most incon- 
 siderate and outspoken, finding the moral to be : "Young 
 man, yield to your passions; intrigue with a woman and 
 desert her ; neglect the business entrusted to you ; go 
 strolling through the country in the ti'ain of a company 
 of actors ; talk about art, etc.". As early as 1829, in the 
 Southern Review a critic wrote of it: "There are cir- 
 cumstances in the plot, which however artfully combined 
 and wrought into a whole, are essentially abhorrent from 
 our manners and prejudices. ""^ Theodore Parker found 
 it immoral — "The actors in the scenes are low and sel- 
 fish, for the most part mean and lewd Yet there 
 
 are some fine pictures of life." George H. Calvert char- 
 acterized it (1836) as "the greatest prose fiction ever 
 produced," — "presenting so truthful and significant and 
 
THE INDIVIDUAI, WORKS. II3 
 
 art-beautiful a picture of the struggles and attainments, 
 the joys and griefs, the labors and recreations, the ca- 
 pacities and failings of mortal man, that from its study 
 we rise with strength freshened and feelings purified, and 
 our vision of all earthly things brightened." Margaret 
 Fuller, here as in her other appreciations, senses more 
 clearly the underlying motive of the novel, finding in it 
 "the continuation of 'Faust' in the practical sense of the 
 
 education of man" — "The main spring of action is 
 
 a disciple of circumstance, whose marked characteristic 
 is a taste for virtue and knowledge." 
 
 It was the first of Goethe's works that Emerson read, 
 and if we consider the prominence which he gives to it in 
 his statements on Goethe, we must conclude that it was a 
 work which he esteemed highly and read carefully. He 
 prized it for its wisdom, its reality, and broad philosophy 
 
 of life. "We have loved Meister a long time It 
 
 wants to be read well; it contains the analysis of life."^" 
 It was the best specimen, he said, of a higher type of 
 novel than that of costume or circumstance, to which 
 class most of the contemporary English novels had to be 
 relegated; it was a "novel of character," a "noble book," 
 — "A castle and a wife are not the indispensable conclu- 
 sion, but the development of character being the problem, 
 the reader is made a partaker of the whole prosperity. 
 Everything good in such a story remains with the reader 
 when the book is closed." That Emerson was not alto- 
 gether incapable of appreciating Goethe's high motive of 
 individual culture in its relation to social well-being, as 
 were so many of his contemporaries, is shown by the fol- 
 following statement: "It gave the hint of a cultivated 
 society which we found nowhere else. It was founded 
 on power to do what was necessary, each person finding 
 it an indispensable qualification of membership that he 
 could do something useful, as in mechanics or agriculture 
 or other indispensable art; then a probity, a justice was 
 
114 li-MERSON A.\'D GOETIIi:. 
 
 to be its element, symbolized by the insisting that each 
 property should be cleared of privilege, and should pay 
 its full tax to the State. Then, a perception of beauty 
 was the equally indispensable element of the association, 
 by which each was dignified and all were dignified ; then 
 each was to obey his genius to the length of abandon- 
 ment. They watched each candidate vigilantly, without 
 his knowing that he was observed, and when he had given 
 proof that he was a faithful man, then all doors, all 
 honors, all relations were open to him ; high behaviour 
 fraternized with high behaviour, without question of 
 heraldry, and the only power recognized is the force of 
 character." (Wks. XII, p. 376). It was in this regard 
 that he found the argument of the book to be ''the pass- 
 age of a democrat to the aristocracy." (Wks. IV, p. 279). 
 An aristocrat to Emerson was a man of character, of 
 health, of moral integrity and independence, and it is in 
 this sense that he here uses the word. "And this passage 
 is not made in any mean or creeping way, but through 
 the hall door. Nature and character assist, and the rank 
 is made real by sense and probity in the nobles. No gen- 
 erous youth can escape this charm of reality in the book, 
 so that it is highly stimulating to intellect and courage." 
 Yet he found the novel wanting in the supreme test. 
 Though its problem was the making of character and its 
 knowledge of life profound, it failed, like its author, to 
 attain the highest level of -vision and sublimity. It re- 
 mained in and of the Actual. "I am charmed with the 
 insight; to use a phrase of Ben Johnson's 'it is rammed 
 with life.' I find there actual men and women even too- 
 faithfully painted. I am moreover instructed in the pos- 
 sibility of a highly accomplished society, and taught to 
 look for great talent and culture under a grey coat. But 
 this is all. The limits of artificial society are never quite 
 out of sight. The vicious conventions, which hem us in 
 like prison walls and which the poet should explode at 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL WORKS. I15 
 
 his touch, stand for all they are worth in the newspaper. 
 I am never lifted above myself. I am not transported out 
 of the dominion of the senses, or cheered with an infinite 
 tenderness, or armed with a great trust." (Wks. XII, 
 
 P-330)- 
 
 The comment on the "Meister" in the Essay in the 
 "Representative Men," gives a precise summary of Emer- 
 son's critical judgment, and reflects in brief his attitude 
 toward the German poet. " 'Wilhelm Meister' is a novel 
 in every sense, the first of its kind, called by its admirers 
 the only delineation of modern society — as if other novels, 
 those of Scott, for example, dealt with costume and con- 
 dition, this was with the spirit of life. It is a book over 
 which some veil is still drawn. It is read by very intelli- 
 gent persons with wonder and delight. It is preferred 
 by some such to 'Hamlet,' as a work of genius. I sup- 
 pose no book of this century can compare with it in its 
 delicious sweetness, so new, so provoking to the mind, 
 gratifying it. with so many and so solid thoughts, just 
 insights into life, and manners, and characters ; so many 
 good hints for the conduct of life, so many unexpected 
 glimpses into a higher sphere, and never a trace of rhe- 
 toric or dullness. A very provoking book to the curiosity 
 of young men of genius, but a very unsatisfactory one. 
 Lovers of light reading, those who look in it for the 
 entertainment they find in a romance, are disappointed. 
 On the other hand, those who begin it with the higher 
 hope to read in it a worthy history of genius, and just 
 award of the laurel to its toils and denials, have also 
 reason to complain. We had an English romance here, 
 not long ago, professing to embody the hope of a new 
 age, and to unfold the political hope of the party called 
 'Young England,' in which the only reward of virtue is a 
 seat in Parliament, and a peerage. Goethe's romance 
 has a conclusion as lame and immoral. George Sand, in 
 "Consuelo" and its continuation, has sketched a truer 
 
Il6 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 and more dignified picture. In the progress of the story, 
 the characters of the hero and heroine expand at a rate 
 that shivers the porcelain chess-table of aristocratic con- 
 vention : they quit the society and habits of their rank ; 
 they lose their wealth; they become the servants of great 
 ideas, and of the most generous social ends; until, at last, 
 the hero, who is the centre and fountain of an associa- 
 tion for the rendering of the noblest benefits to the human 
 race, no longer answers to his own titled name ; it sounds 
 foreign and remote in his ear. 'I am only man,' he says ; 
 'I breathe and work for man,' and this in poverty and 
 extreme sacrifices. Goethe's hero, on the contrary, has 
 so many weaknesses and impurities, and keeps such bad 
 company, that the sober English public, when the book 
 was translated, were disgusted. And yet it is crammed 
 with wisdom, with knowledge of the world, and with 
 knowledge of laws ; the persons so truly and subtly drawn, 
 and with such few strokes, and not a word too much, 
 the book remains ever so new and unexhausted, that we 
 must even let it go its way, and be willing to get what 
 good from it we can, assured that it has only begun its 
 office, and has millions of readers yet to serve." 
 
 "Faust" fared worse than the "Meister." Emerson 
 found it a "painful," "destructive" poem, lacking in af- 
 firmation, altogether "one of the most disagreeable books 
 that I can read." The angel-song and chorus at the open- 
 ing were to him "magazine or 'squirt' poetry." (J. VIII, 
 p. 70). He recognized it to be a most remarkable lit- 
 erary work, and especially exemplary of the literary 
 temper of the age;" introversive, sceptical, egoistic. "I 
 find Faust a little too modern and intelligible. We can 
 find such a fabric at several mills, though a Httle inferior. 
 Faust abounds in the disagreeable. The vice is prurient, 
 learned, Parisian. In the presence of Jove, Priapus may 
 be allowed as an offset, but here he is an .equal hero. 
 The egotism, the wit, is calculated. The book is undeni- 
 
THE INDIVIDUAI, WORKS. II7 
 
 ably written by a master, and stands unhappily related to 
 the whole rriodern world; but it is a very disagreeable 
 chapter of literature, and accuses the author as well as 
 the times." (Wks. VIII, p. 69). Goethe was satisfied to 
 represent the modern mind, but he "does not represent 
 the Eternal mind."'^ "The miraculous, the beauty 
 which we can manufacture at no mill, can give no account 
 of, it wants." (J. VIII, p. 245). In other words, it 
 never thrilled him with truly great and noble sentiments, 
 it never lifted him out of himself and as by a miracle 
 gave him, if only for a moment, a glimpse of the subHme 
 heights of poetry. "It marked itself by a certain pre- 
 dominance of the intellect in the balance of powers." C. 
 E. Norton records that at one time, when dining with 
 Lewes and Emerson, the latter in the course of some 
 discussion about Goethe amazed Lewes by saying: "L 
 hate 'Faust' ; it is a bad book."^" But we must not infer 
 that Emerson was totally oblivious to some of its greater 
 qualities and beauty. The Second Part he never read 
 carefully in its entirety and hence missed the true import 
 of the poem and failed to read understandingly its mes- 
 sage of human salvation, which is to be attained only 
 through labors undertaken in the spirit of purest altruism. 
 Mr. J. B. Thayer tells us that in 1871 Emerson said of 
 it that it was "only a sketch," and that his knowledge of 
 this was "only partial."'* He probably appreciated its 
 prodigious versatility and largeness of wisdom and was 
 very likely not a little puzzled by its amazing complexity 
 of imaginative flight. On the whole, the Second Part of 
 'Faust' was to him the Helena act, which he first leanied 
 to know and appreciate, probably, through Carlyle's essay. 
 "In 'Helena' Faust is sincere and represents actual, cul- 
 tivated, strong-natured man ; the book would be farago 
 without the sincerity of Faust." (J. VI, p. 466). And 
 in this vein, he adds : "I think the second part of Faust 
 the grandest enterprise of literature that has been at- 
 
Il8 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 tempted since the 'Paradise Lost'." "It is a philosophy 
 of history set in poetry : the work of one who found him- 
 self the master of histories, mythologies, philosophies, 
 sciences, and national literatures, in the encyclopaedical 
 manner in which modern erudition, with its international 
 intercourse of the whole earth's population, researches 
 into Indian, Etruscan, and all Cyclopaean arts, geology, 
 chemistry, astronomy; and every one of these kingdoms 
 assuming a certain aerial and poetic character, by reason 
 
 of the multitude These are not wild miraculous 
 
 songs, but elaborate poems, to which the poet has con- 
 fided the results of eighty years of observation. This 
 reflective and critical wisdom makes the poem more truly 
 the flower of this time. It dates itself." (Wks. IV, p. 
 271). It is not the artistic technique of the work, but its 
 richness of content, that attracts him. In it he saw real 
 greatness : "After taxing Goethe as a courtier, artificial, 
 unbelieving, worldly — I took up his book of Helena, and 
 found him an Indian of the wilderness, a piece of pure 
 nature like an apple or an oak, large as morning or night, 
 and virtuous as a briar-rose." (Wks. Ill, p. 242). Yet 
 he admired in it its grotesque fancy, its symbolism, and 
 imaginative reality. "And although that poem be as 
 vague and fantastic as a dream, yet it is much more at- 
 tractive than the more regular dramatic pieces of the 
 same author, for the reason that it operates a wonderful 
 relief to the mind from the routine of customary images, 
 • — awakens the reader's invention and fancy by the wild 
 freedom of the design, and by the unceasing succession of 
 brisk shocks of surprise." (Wks. II, p. 33). 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CRITICAL ANALYSIS. 
 
 I. The Ideaust AND thh; Realist. 
 
 The norm of American criticism was, as we have 
 seen, in the main, ethical. The New England Transcen- 
 dental revolt remained rooted in the Puritanic tradition. 
 It fed upon the speculative thought of German Romanti- 
 cism and of those who had come under its influence, and 
 also upon the teachings of all the great ideaHsts, ancient 
 and modern, eastern and western. But it was in origin 
 a rfeligious revolt, and remained so in general tenor, its 
 foremost representative being primarily in deed and 
 thought a preacher and minister of the Spirit. Emer- 
 son's philosophy, in so far as it can be termed a phil- 
 osophy, was subsidiary to his ethical teaching. JVIere 
 intellectuality was to him inferior to morals, and meta- 
 physical speculation was of value only in so far as it 
 furnished a support to his ethical doctrine. His ideas 
 were to him "pegs to hang morals on," centers from 
 which to go forth to teach the conduct of life, and it is 
 in this light, as a spiritual and rporal force, that we must 
 view his thought and work. 
 
 Fundamental to every tenet of his philosophy lies the 
 validity of the moral law, and in this he finds his opti- 
 mistic assurance of the positive gain of life. At their 
 core all things, he said, are moral, or, in his own words : 
 "The moral law lies at the center of nature and radiates 
 to the circumference." (Wks. I, p. 41). It is this dis- 
 tinction that sets him apart as a thinker and distinguishes 
 
I20 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 him as the New England product of the larger Romantic 
 group. To him the primal cause is not force or energy 
 unqualified, but is moral energy, moral force. God's ways 
 are moral ways and reach their most perfect expression 
 when untrammelled and uncorrupted by the petty, selfish 
 desire or will of man. Man's duty it is to serve God, 
 and in its purest form this signifies self-surrender, free 
 and unconditional, to God's will as intuited in the human 
 breast and the human mind. He is the greatest man who 
 abandons himself most freely and impersonally to the 
 divine inspiration and becomes in sooth as ''a transparent 
 eyeball" to the divine vision. Thus does self-reliance 
 mean God-reliance. The will of man in its purity is 
 servant to the will of God, and so do both attain their 
 highest ends. In their union lie strength and power. 
 The man who fails because of selfish perversity or fancy 
 of this submission, and seeks to follow some personal 
 vain conceit, is a blind, a selfish, and a "vicious'' subject. 
 His error is pernicious : his trust is in himself, not in the 
 God within him, and therein he is a half-man, false to 
 the law of laws, which is an expression of the Moral- 
 sentiment. His gain is abortive and is a loss, for it is 
 negative; the moral, the good, alone is positive. Truth- 
 to-self marks the nobility of man, for truth to self is 
 always service to God, and except that a thing is service- 
 able to God it is not moral, but false. Man must divine 
 the infinity and godliness of his nature, the omnipresence 
 and omnipotence of the soul, and of this he must become 
 a willing instrument. 
 
 "All things are moral, and in their boundless changes 
 have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature. There- 
 fore is nature glorious with form, color, and motion, that 
 every globe in the remotest heaven ; every chemical 
 change from the rudest crystal up to the laws of life; 
 every change of vegetation from the first principle of 
 growth in the eye of a leaf, to the tropical forest and 
 
THE IDEAI,TST AND THE REALIST. 121 
 
 antediluvian coal-mine; every animal function from the 
 sponge up to Hercules, shall hint or thunder to man the 
 laws of right and wrong, and echo the Ten Command- 
 ments. Therefore is nature ever the ally of Religion: 
 lends all her pomp and riches to the rehgious sentiment. 
 Prophet and priest, David, Isaiah, Jesus, have drawn 
 deeply from this source. This ethical character so pene- 
 trates the bone and marrow of nature as to seem the 
 end for which it was made. Whatever private purpose 
 is answered by any member or part, this is its public 
 and universal function, and is never omitted. Nothing 
 in nature is exhausted in its first use. When a thing has 
 served an end to the uttermost, it is wholly new for an 
 ulterior service. In God every end is converted into a 
 new means. Thus the use of commodity, regarded by 
 itself, is mean and squalid. But it is to the mind an edu- 
 cation in the doctrine of Use, namely, that a thing is 
 good only in so far as it serves; that a conspiracy of 
 parts and efforts to the production of an end, is essential 
 to any being." (Wks. I, p. 39). 
 
 Emerson's interest in an object is always in its moral 
 uses. As an idealist he "sees the world in God." In 
 common with Schelling and the Romanticists he finds 
 that the Divine is expressed in the outer world in un- 
 conscious form, and in the inner world in conscious form. 
 "The world proceeds from the same spirit as the body 
 of man. It is a remoter incarnation of God, a projection 
 of God in the unconscious. But it differs from the body 
 in one important respect. It is not, like that, now sub- 
 jected to the human will. Its serene order is inviolable 
 by us." (Wks. I, p. 64). It is part and parcel of that all- 
 containing Spirit which Schelling termed Weltseele and 
 Emerson Oversoul, and which is ever coming to birth in 
 continuous emanation in this world's manifold and end- 
 less fllux and flow. Energy, divine and hence moral, is 
 conceived as fundamental to existence, and in man and 
 
122 EMERSON AND GOETHi;. 
 
 in nature it reaches conditioned and finite expression. 
 In the soul of man it attains its highest known expres- 
 sion ; for the soul contains potentially the entire universe 
 of experience, and in the process of life is unfolded in 
 due measure. The individual soul must be receptive of 
 the divine influx, for its activity lies in its self-surrender, 
 in its passivity, in its obedience to the divine law. Such 
 moments of absolute receptive submission to God are its 
 growing-moments and mark its development. It is then 
 that the divine hand writes its message upon the indi- 
 vidual soul and liberates it. "When it (the Oversoul) 
 breathes through his (man's) intelligence, it is genius; 
 when it breathes through his will, it is virtue; when it 
 flows through his affection, it is love. And the blindness 
 of the intellect begins when it would be something of 
 itself. The weakness of the will begins, when the indi- 
 vidual would be something of himself. All reform aims, 
 in some particular, to let the great soul have its way 
 through us ; in other words to engage us to obey." ( Wks. 
 II, p. 271). 
 
 Upon this basic conception rest the principal doctrines 
 of Emerson's teaching. Man must acquiesce in the will 
 of God. In complete submergence of self and annihila- 
 tion of all mere selfish aim, he comes to his true being as 
 an individual. His activity must be that of an agent of 
 the Oversoul. His own.wiU must never be at variance 
 with the Overwill. "We need only obey." Individual 
 choice lies only in acquiescence to the divine will, and 
 thus action becomes spontaneous. The mode of knowl- 
 edge is intuition and that of action is impulse, for man's 
 act as his thought is prompted by the divine spirit within 
 him. He must abandon himself to its call. In such 
 abandonment, in enthusiasm and ecstasy, there is purer 
 being ; then the divine energy works to fullest expression, 
 for in this state it is freest and most truly itself, and 
 under these circumstances man is most firmly reliant, 
 
THE IDEALIST AND THE UEAEIST. I23 
 
 because he is then, in deepest accord with the Divinity 
 within him. "We love characters in proportion as they 
 are impulsive and spontaneous. The less a man thinks 
 or knows about his virtues the better we like him." (Wks. 
 II, p. 133). And the truly great man, the virtuous man, 
 is one who finds himself ever in unison with nature's 
 workings : he is the man of power, the man of character, 
 because he is a generous partaker in the moral nature 
 of the world, and through him this order comes most 
 completely into. its own. "The termination of the world 
 in a man, appears to be the last victory of intelligence." 
 (Wks. I, p. 205). "And so I think that the last lesson 
 of life, the choral song which rises from all elements 
 and all angels, is, a voluntary obedience, a necessitated 
 freedom. Man is made of the same atoms as the world 
 is, he shares the same impressions, predispositions, and 
 destiny. When his mind is illuminated, when his heart 
 is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the sublime order, 
 and does, with knowledge, what the stones do by struc- 
 ture." (Wks. VI, p. 240). 
 
 Thus in the light of the soul all men are equal. The 
 soul is the great equalizer in that each individual shares 
 in its glory and benefits in its power. It is not intellectual 
 or physical strength but moral intuition which unites 
 mankind into a large brotherhood. The soul teaches man 
 the indifference of circumstance and the worth of the 
 moral law. In all the constant flux of the phenomena, 
 in the incessant strife, the duality, the antagonism of 
 forces, man finds permanency in the all-containing soul. 
 "The soul is." Blinded often in his effort and forgetful 
 of his true destiny man falls prey to lesser aims, to the 
 vain illusions of self, arid in due measure Nature inflicts 
 punishment. For in the natural order all things are dual. 
 For every gain there is a loss and for every loss a gain. 
 "In nature nothing can be given, all things are sold." 
 The law of polarity, which is so evident in every depart- 
 
124 BMURSON AND GOETHi;. 
 
 merit of the Goethean philosophy, is to be met everywhere 
 in Emerson. "Every excess causes a defect ; every defect 
 an excess. Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good. 
 Every faculty, which is a receiver of pleasure, has an 
 equal penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its 
 moderation with its Hfe." (Wks. II, p. 98). The evil 
 and the good receive always fit compensation. "There 
 is always some levelling circumstance, that puts down 
 the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, sub- 
 stantially on the same ground with all others." The 
 Overwill is not to be violated with impunity. There is 
 no chance, no anarchy in the universe. All is system 
 and gradation. "The permanent interest of every man 
 is,, never to be in a false position, but to have the weight 
 of Nature to back him in all he does. Riches and pov- 
 erty are a thick or thin costume; and our life — the life 
 of all of us — identical. For we transcend the circum- 
 stance continually, and taste the real quality of existence ; 
 as in our employments, which only differ in the manipu- 
 lations, but express the same laws ; or in our thoughts, 
 which wear no silks and taste no ice-creams. We see. 
 God face to face every hour, and know the savour of 
 Nature." (Wks. VI., p. 373). Emerson calls for the 
 complete man, for him who, soul-reliant, is master of 
 his several faculties, not the slave of any individual one; 
 for him who goes always and only to the source of things 
 to obtain his knowledge, to universals not particulars. 
 Nature stretches out her arms to embrace the man who 
 is equal to her greatness, and such a one is to be found 
 in the all-rounded personality, in the larger soul, in the 
 lover of Truth, Virtue, and Beauty ; the man who is in- 
 different to ends as such, but zealous in the freeing-power 
 and the totality of the Spirit. "Truth, and goodness, and 
 beauty are but different faces of the same All," and one 
 who merely reads the one face sees merely a part and 
 remains dwarfed and incomplete. His is not the deepest 
 
THB IDEALIST AND THE REAI^IST. 1 25 
 
 insight; his vision is obscured; and his accompHshment 
 is disappointing because it is the product not of an all- 
 pervading, all-compelling genius, but of some over-devel- 
 oped talent. "And in common life, whosoever has 
 seen a person of powerful character and happy genius, 
 will have remarked how easily he took all things along 
 with him, — the persons, the opinions, and the day, and 
 nature became ancillary to a man." Such is the great 
 man, sweet of temper and cheerful, tolerant, following 
 the call of his faculties to endless exertion, hitching his 
 wagon to a star, and keeping with tender courage in the 
 midst of the crowd the independence of solitude — a 
 moral instrument in the divine workings of reality. 
 
 Man and his "supplement," nature, are, then, moral 
 agents. They are in and of the Moral-sentiment, and in 
 their pure manifestations expressions of the divine 
 energy. They are contained in God. So then must their 
 workings be moral, as they are responsible to God. The 
 aim of every thing is a moral aim, and it is to be tested 
 by its moral value. All things that are valid and have 
 power are of necessity moral. Emerson always judges 
 everything in the light of the Moral-ideal. 
 
 It is in this direction that we have found his criti- 
 cisms of Goethe especially poignant, for it is here that 
 the vital distinction between the New Englander and the 
 German lay. The former has the roots of his thought 
 firmly embedded in the ethical tradition of Puritanic 
 Calvinism, the latter in the aesthetic tradition of the Ren- 
 aissance. Emerson would ever supplant the thing by the 
 thought, the particular by the universal. He constructs 
 his theoretical scheme and fits the empirical world into 
 it ; he starts out with a moral premise and treats all things 
 in such a manner as to substantiate his assertion. As he 
 says, "The sensual man conforms thoughts to things ; 
 the poet (spiritual) conforms things to his thoughts." 
 
126 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 (Wks. I, p. 52). He reads the riddle of nature not as 
 it appears to his senses, but as the divine intuition sug- 
 gests to him its deepest meaning. He has little sympathy 
 with a purely scientific method. He is always subjective. 
 
 "I write of things that are 
 Not what appears; 
 Of things as they are in the eye of God 
 Not in the eye of man." 
 
 (J. II, p. 394). 
 
 He does not penetrate the permanent by means of the 
 transitory, the idea by the symbol, but explains the symbol 
 by the idea, the transitory by means of the permanent. 
 "We bring with us to every experiment the innate uni- 
 versal laws. These, while they exist in the mind as ideas, 
 stand around us in nature for ever embodied." (Wks. 
 II, p. 19s). His idea of evolution — the meaning of which 
 he, like many others, sensed before Darwin gave it scien- 
 tific exposition — was more closely related to that of 
 Schelling and Goethe, an idealistic interpretation involv- 
 ing the idea of the universal type, of which the phe- 
 nomena present continuous emanations. In this respect 
 the efforts and studies of his friend, Agassiz, helped and 
 confirmed him in some of his central thoughts. And 
 here we may add, that it was in the spirit of reverence, 
 akin to that of the noblest Romantic poets, that he always 
 approached nature. His reflective bent of mind looked 
 always for moral truths and in the presence of nature 
 he was wont to feel himself closely in touch with the 
 great Moral-spirit in which he believed all things sub- 
 sisted, and as by a miracle to sense what he' termed "the 
 deeper secret of the hour." 
 
 The Goethean manner of approaching nature was, as 
 we have seen, essentially realistic. To him nature was a 
 Unity, filled with living force, and his conception of it 
 was vitalistic and may be termed a dynamic pantheism. 
 
THE IDEALTST AND THE REALIST. 12/ 
 
 His aim in his study was to understand this vital essence 
 by observing its operations in the constantly changing 
 phenomenal world. His method was objective and scien- 
 tific, but even in his scientific labors he approached the 
 world with the vision of the artist; his thought was 
 always constructive; and the goal of his analysis was 
 ever a new synthesis. The distinction between him and 
 a Romanticist, such as Schelling, is that he remains in 
 this world and of it, basing his investigation on the ma- 
 terial of sensuous experience. He would penetrate from 
 without to find the inner kernel and not work outwardly 
 from a presupposed kernel within. What for Schelling 
 was a metaphysical principle is for Goethe poetic and 
 constructive observation. It was primarily objective study 
 of nature, illumined by artistic insight, and not meta- 
 physical speculation, that unlocked for him the mystery 
 of things. 
 
 And herein too lies the distinction in method between 
 Goethe and Emerson. The one was realist and artist, 
 the other idealist and preacher. The one looked at the 
 world, a calm observer, and divined its hidden meanings 
 in the light of his sensuous and spiritual experience. The 
 other looked forth from the gateway of the Moral-senti- 
 ment and watched the secret workings of the Spirit in 
 the domains of natural life. Thus we are prepared at the 
 outset to find in them two different types, distinctive, it 
 is true, in their method and general philosophical outlook, 
 but similar in their estimation of the ultimate values 
 of life. 
 
 Emerson was attracted to Goethe because he found in 
 him a broad and quick sympathy with life in all its forms 
 and an all-comprehensive mind which was in touch with 
 well-nigh every field of knowledge and had a word to say 
 of each, but he was in turn repelled because in Goethe 
 he came in contact with a type of man and mind which 
 he himself had difficulty in understanding. It was largely 
 
128 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 the inherent nature of Emerson's genius which prevented 
 him from attaining any adequate appreciation of Goethe, 
 the man and his work as a whole. In these two men 
 there is to be found a divergence of type such as Schiller 
 so ably analyzed in his essay on Naive and Sentimental 
 Poetry and characterized 'by the terms idealist and realist. 
 Each type approaches its object in its own way, the realist 
 with an open mind, quick to respond and to perceive, the 
 idealist with an idea, an assumption by which he en- 
 deavors to reach an understanding. In Emerson as in 
 Schiller we have the reflective poet, the moral-idealist, 
 who dwells largely in the solitude of thought and moves 
 men by the forceful strength of his ideas, his moral 
 enthusiasm and faith in human progress and betterment, 
 his direct spiritual appeal and power to liberate the soul 
 and set it soaring. In Goethe, as in Shakespeare, we find 
 the 'naive' poet, the man who is of and in life and as an 
 artist succeeds in holding the mirror up to nature. This 
 latter type moves us by its instinctive truth to nature 
 and life; humanity is presented to us in all fidelity, not 
 as it ought to be but as it is and ever was ; we are spirit- 
 ually freed by being morally clarified and purged. The 
 realist seeks to establish his happiness in this world ; he 
 is an empiricist and resigns himself submissively to na- 
 tural and physical laws and to the ways of the social 
 world. He is a part of nature and does not desire to 
 break with her; his freedom is the freedom which nature 
 owns ; he is a child of the world, a man among men, 
 naively enjoying life and content with what the present 
 ofifers, an optimist who finds each thing organically re- 
 lated to the whole and learns to revere in it an all-per- 
 vading and ever present spiritual force. The idealist, on 
 the other hand, turns to his ideal to find happiness in 
 spiritual freedom. He is a transcendentalist and stands 
 in opposition to nature ; his is a militant attitude ; he does 
 not resign himself to the world ; he heralds his faith in 
 
THE IDEALIST AND THE REALIST. 1 29 
 
 spiritual freedom, and opposes and would, if necessary, 
 even deny the world, to realize his ideal. His attitude is 
 always a moral one ; he demands great individual deeds 
 and admires the man who can stake his all on some great 
 principle. The realist bases his moral values upon life 
 as a whole; he is calmer and more judicious, and his acts 
 do not stand out in especial prominence; Ke seeks happi- 
 ness for the individual by accommodating him to the 
 ways of the wftrld, and is never out of touch with reality, 
 and hence he is often charged with "worldliness.'' He 
 does not exhort us to great deeds nor lift us to sublime 
 heights by the liberating force of his thought, as does the 
 idealist. His is a more sympathetic appreciation of life, 
 for he gives us life itself in his art, not ideas concerning it. 
 In any comparative study of the character of the 
 genius of Goethe and Emerson the above distinction be- 
 comes at once apparent, and although the great danger 
 of generalizations in an undertaking of this sort is fully 
 realized, we find that all we can do in treating men of 
 such complexity and comprehensiveness of thought and 
 achievement is to limit ourselves to a cross-section, as it 
 were, of the work of each. Thus the fundamental con- 
 sideration which presents itself is an ethical one, and is 
 dependent in the case of each poet upon his individual 
 nature and the larger thought-environment. Emerson, 
 the idealist, the son of puritanic New England, placed his 
 faith in the Ideal, in which he alone found salvation for 
 humanity. ^lan had fallen, he thought; his ways and 
 his will were 'vicious,' and it was only as he became the 
 willing tool of the Spirit and freely surrendered himself 
 to the divine will, that he was to be saved. Emerson be- 
 longs with Kant and Plato to the great idealists, to whom 
 the reality of the Spirit only brings satisfaction. Man is 
 not as he should be ; he must submit to the Moral-order 
 and will in the light of the Moral-law. H^is duty it is to 
 will the right, to force himself to obey, or as Emerson 
 
I30 KifERSON AND GOliTHE. 
 
 would put it perhaps, to resign himself to obey. He must 
 be reborn in the Spirit. Herein lies freedom, "necessi- 
 tated freedom," the individual freely resigning himself to 
 work, indeed to be, in the glory of the Moral-ideal. Only 
 in this respect does man show his superiority over nature. 
 ''The evolution of a highly-destined society must be 
 moral ; it must run in the grooves of the celestial wheels. 
 It must be catholic in aims. What is moral? It is the 
 respecting in action catholic or universal ends. Hear the 
 definition which Kant gives of moral conduct : 'Act 
 always so that the immediate motive of thy will may be- 
 come a universal rule for all intelligent beings'." (Wks. 
 VII, p. 26). The distinction between the Goethean ethical 
 doctrine and that of Emerson is, then, essentially that be- 
 tween the ethics of Goethe and those of Kant; for New 
 England Transcendentalism united puritanic rigorism 
 with the teachings of the Romantic philosophy and hence 
 in ethical consideration preferred the principles of Kant 
 to those of Schelling. 
 
 As Kant and Emerson put their faith in the ideal 
 order, Goethe believed firmly in the natural, in humanity. 
 A born realist, he defended human nature and looked 
 upon it with trust and love. He did not approach reality 
 like the idealist with an ideal order in mind and there- 
 fore did not find that it failed to measure up to his own 
 standard. Err as man will, he said, so long as he strives 
 he is instinctively moral — "so viel der Mensch fehlen und 
 irren mag, mit seinem tiefsten Wesen ist er doch auf das 
 Rechte und Gute gerichtet, ist er dem Gottlichen zuge- 
 wendet, aus dem er stammt;" or as the Lord expresses 
 it in "Faust" : 
 
 "Ein guter Mensch in seinem dunklen Drange, 
 Ist sich des rechten Weges wohl bewuszt." 
 
 It is only by means of error that man may learn to 
 find his way and to know the good — "Es irrt der Mensch 
 
THi; IDEALIST AND THE REAUST. 131 
 
 solang er strebt", — for mistakes are unavoidable to one 
 who strives, and only he who has striven on untiringly 
 in a life of activity and struggle is worthy of salvation 
 and of divine grace. The words of the chorus of angels 
 who bear aloft Faust's immortal remains impress this 
 fundamental conviction upon us : 
 
 " 'Wer immer strebend sich bemiiht, 
 Den konnen wir erlosen.' 
 Und hat an ihm die Liebe gar 
 Von oben teilgenommen, 
 Begegnet ihm die selige Schar 
 Mit herzHchem Willkommen." 
 
 (1. 1 1936 f.) 
 
 And in the terse couplet of the Divan-poem (Wke. 5 — 
 p. 119), Goethe again clearly states his faith that the gates 
 of a future world always open to the man whose life has 
 been intensely human in its active strife and struggle : — - 
 
 "Denn ich bin ein Mensch gewesen, 
 Und das heiszt ein Kampfer sein." 
 
 That human nature was in itself depraved and evil was 
 a conception abhorrent to Goethe; this it was which he 
 severely criticised in the orthodox church-doctrine, and 
 which repelled him from Kant's views on the radical evil 
 in human nature/^ He could not become reconciled to 
 the teaching that man by self-abnegation and self-annihil- 
 ation, if necessary, should force himself to perform the 
 good. The Kantian and the Emersonian idea of freedom 
 was foreign to him, as was also the need of an inner 
 spiritual revolution or liberation by force of will. He 
 gave an optimistic affirmation of life, because of the in- 
 tense humanity of his own nature. Looking upon life in 
 its biological aspect he accepted man as he found him. 
 
 Goethe was artist and poet as Shakespeare was artist 
 and poet, and portrayed mankind as the experiences of 
 
132 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 his life revealed it to him; in the infinite variety of life 
 lay his interests, yian, he thought, should be what nature 
 has destined him to become. Within each individual there 
 is an inner original endowment, a monad, which is in fact 
 the very essence of his individuality, or the "Damon," 
 and this, in its reaction upon the environment develops 
 to full and conscious form and power. There is no force, 
 no inner revolution, no sharp break in Goethe, for his 
 faith is in the continuous natural growth of the organism, 
 an incessant groping toward the light. Fie emphasizes 
 the natural goodness of humanity; his is a joyful, cheer- 
 ful faith in mankind. Individual inclination should not 
 be thwarted, but carefully trained and directed. "Gewisz 
 ein Gemut, das Neigung zum Guten hat, musz uns, wenn 
 wir es gewahr warden, schon hochlich erfreuen; aber 
 Schoneres ist nichts in der Welt als Neigung durch Ver- 
 nunft und Gewissen Geleitet." (Wke. i6: p. 239). 
 
 Emerson subjects individual inclination to the service 
 of the Moral-law. For he considers individual inclina- 
 tion, if it run counter to the laws of conscience, to be 
 wicked and vicious and self-destructive, and therefore he 
 demands that it be suppressed or stifled. The individual's 
 duty is a rigorous resignation to the ways of God. Here 
 is a point-of-view which Goethe would scarcely accept. 
 His aim was to direct individual impulse rather than force 
 or stifle it. Duty to him was well-directed inclination; — 
 "Pflicht — wo man liebt was man sich selbst befiehlt." 
 Truth to one's own individual nature, self-assertion, a 
 realization of one's possibilities and limitations to better 
 effect one's aim in life, in short, incessant activity as a 
 social unit in a social group — this is the substance of the 
 Goethean practical wisdom of life. The great teaching 
 of "Faust" and of the "Wanderjahre" is that man's 
 noblest mission on earth is realized in social-service ; 
 herein only does he prove true to his inherent nature and 
 
THE IDEAI^IST AND THE REALIST. I33 
 
 find happiness. Emerson, the practical idealist, finds 
 man's mission not in the direct service of society, not 
 priinarily in the service of his fellow-men, but in the ser- 
 vice of the Ideal, of God.'" This is to him the highest 
 type of service and inclusive of all others, for only in 
 exercise of it is man true to the divine nature of which 
 he is a part. 
 
 "He that feeds men serveth few; 
 He serves all who dare be true." 
 
 But Goethe, the practical realist, keeps his eyes fastened 
 on this earth and on the labors of man for himself and 
 his fellow-men. "Tatig zu sein," he says, "ist des Men- 
 
 schen erste Bestimmung Ein tiichtiger Mensch, der 
 
 hier schon etwas ordentliches zu sein gedenkt, und 
 dadurch taglich zu streben, zu kampfen und zu wirken 
 hat, laszt die kiinftige Welt auf sich beruhen und ist tatig 
 imd niitzlich in dieser."'" So too Faust philosophizes as 
 he surveys the strivings and experiences of his life. (1. 
 11441 f.) :— 
 
 "Der Erdenkreis ist mir genug bekannt. 
 Nach driiben ist die Aussicht uns verrant; 
 Tor, wer dorthin die Augen blinzehid richtet, 
 Sich uber Wolken seinesgleichen dichtet! 
 Er stehe fest und sehe hier sich um; 
 Dem Tiichtigen ist diese Welt nicht stumm. 
 Was braucht er in die Ewigkeit zu schweifen ! 
 Was er erkennt, laszt sich ergreifen." 
 
 This fundamental ethical distinction is reflected in 
 many particulars of thought, among others in the con- 
 ceptions of nature, of art, of character and culture, of 
 greatness in men, and of government. Emerson places a 
 moral evaluation upon each and every object and upon 
 each individual act, whereas Goethe is far more inclined 
 to regard the sum-total and the end of the action. "Der 
 Zweck des Lebens," he said, "ist das Leben selbst." 
 
134 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 Goethe is one of the noblest exponents of the pure 
 spirit of the Renaissance. Ahhough he reahzed the wis- 
 dom of the Kantian categorical imperative and in later 
 years laid emphasis upon it, he did so passively rather 
 than actively. "Ich habe vor dem kategorischen Imper- 
 ativ alien Respeckt, ich weisz wie viel Gutes aus ihni 
 hervorgehen kann, allein man rausz es damit nicht zu 
 weit treiben, denn sonst fijhrt diese Idee der ideellen 
 Freiheit sicher zu nichts Gutem."''^ His ideal was essen- 
 tially aesthetic in the largest sense, and he believed with 
 Schiller that aesthetic development was the soundest 
 preparation for the tasks of life. His desire was to pro- 
 duce and perfect in so far as possible the "harmonious- 
 being," the large, well-rounded personality, the cultured 
 man, the man of power and beauty, one in whom spirit 
 and sense were developed and united in perfect unity. 
 Herein he shows his relation to Shaftesbury and his fol- 
 lowers, to Romanticism and the sanest ideals of the 
 Storm and Stress. Man should aim at universality of 
 genius and strive to become a "virtuoso,"' a superman; he 
 should experience life to the full, exercise all his faculties, 
 and in this manner effect an harmonious development of 
 his own individual personality. As Wilhelm Meister 
 writes : "Mich selbst, ganz wie ich da bin, auszubilden, 
 das war dunkel von Jugend auf mein Wunsch und meine 
 Absicht." (Wke. i8, p. 13). This should be the aim of 
 a broad and general culture, and to this aim all others 
 are subsidiary, except that it itself has as its final goal 
 service for mankind. The individual nature should be- 
 come a complete and harmonious personality, which in 
 all its totality should be ever in the service of humanity. 
 In this regard Goethe's aim is especially manly and moral. 
 The man of culture shall exist not for his own sake, but 
 to serve others, and he must have a distinct vocation 
 among his many avocations. The individual must submit 
 
THE IDEAIvIST AND THE REAI.IST. I35 
 
 to the institutions of society and fit himself into the social 
 group where his personality may find the largest field for 
 expression and become most effective. 
 
 This ideal of the perfected and harmoniously-devel- 
 oped personality, the complete man, was also, we remem- 
 ber, that of Emerson ; the distinction lay in the respective 
 means of attaining the ideal. Goethe believed that it was 
 by natural and well-directed development of the indi- 
 vidual nature that the ideal was to be realized : Emerson 
 ■ taught that it was attainable only in so far as the indi- 
 vidual could bring himself into submissive abandonment 
 to the inpourings of the divine energy. 
 
 Fundamental to the Goethean conception of life is the 
 idea of Force — Kraft — as the Primal Cause of the uni- 
 verse. It is this that is ever active in the outer realm as 
 in the inner, in nature as in personality and character. 
 Personality is not one talent or another, but is expressive 
 in one and all; it is the driving energy that is in and of 
 and above any individual faculty and gives to it active 
 value. Without personality the individual is nothing; 
 there is naught superior to it, for in it the individual 
 nature is partaker of the Divinity. It is expressed in a 
 man's actions and deeds, and is developed by constant 
 contact with the world of men. It is that possession 
 which every individual cherishes as most peculiarly his 
 Own, as most intimately himself, as his own distinct in- 
 dividuality. "In diesem Sinne diirfen wir dem Schwachen, 
 ja dem Feigen selbst Charakter zuschreiben, denn er gibt 
 auf, was andere Menschen iiber alles schatzen, was aber 
 nicht zu seiner Natur gehort ; die Ehre, den Ruhm, nur 
 damit er seine Persohnlichkeit erhalte Einen star- 
 ken Charakter nennt man, wenn er sich alien auszer- 
 lichen Hindernissen machtig entgegensetzt und seine 
 EigentiimHchkeit,- selbst itiit Gefahr, seine Personlichkeit 
 zu verlieren,- durchsetzen siicht. Einen groszen Charakter 
 
136 J^ilKRSOX .WD GOETHE. 
 
 nennt man, wenn die Starke desselben zugleich mit 
 groszen uniibersehlichen, unendlichen Eigenschaften, 
 Fahigkeiten verbunden ist und durch ihn ganz originelle 
 unerwartete Absichten, Plane, Taten, zum Vorschein 
 kommen." Here there is no implication of moral right 
 or wrong. Character is measured by its achievement, by 
 what it has proved itself capable of doing, by its power 
 to act. "Das Haupt-fundament des Charakters ist das 
 entschiedene Wollen ohne Riicksicht auf Recht und Un- 
 recht, auf Gut und Bose, auf Wahrheit oder Irrtum ; es 
 ist das was jede Partei an den Ihrigen so hochlich 
 
 schatzt Der Charakter bleibt derselbe, er mag sich 
 
 dem (Irrtum) oder der (Wahrheit) ergeben Dessen 
 
 ungeachtet bleibt der Charakter immer Charakter, er mag 
 das Rechte oder das Unrechte, das Wahre oder das. 
 Falsche wollen und eifrig dafiir arbeiten." (Wke. 40: 
 p. 261). With Goethe, then, the great character is a 
 man of great personal power and magnetism, able and 
 independent, capable of thinking great thoughts and doing 
 great deeds and always master of himself and of events.'* 
 Personal force, not as with Emerson personal goodness,, 
 is its standard. Goethe would ask — what can the man do ? 
 Emerson would, inquire — what sort of a man is he? Is 
 he a worthy individual? "The foundation of culture, as 
 of character," writes Emerson, "is at last the moral sen- 
 timent. This is the fountain of power, preserves its eter- 
 nal newness, draws its own rent out of every novelty of 
 
 science. Science corrects the old creeds Yet it 
 
 does not surprise the moral-sentiment. That was older, 
 and awaited expectant these larger insights." (Wks. 
 VIII, p. 228). In this sense every man may possess 
 character and culture. The Emersonian view is essen- 
 tially individualistic and democratic, and bears more di- 
 rectly upon individual conduct, refinement, and good- 
 behaviour. It is rather a state of mind than an accomp- 
 
Till' IDEALIST AND THE REALIST. 1 37 
 
 lishment. Truly democratic, its aim is service. That man 
 is cultured who in his own immediate walk of life feels 
 his responsibilities to the larger whole and resigns himself 
 freely to the divinations of the Moral-sentiment — a self- 
 reliant, cheerful, active personality — one who "likes to 
 see a fine barn as well as a good tragedy." (J. II, p. 246) . 
 "I look upon the simple and childish virtues of veracity 
 and honesty as the root of all that is sublime in character." 
 (Wks. VI, p. 322). This ideal is practical and moral 
 and teaches "the grandeur of duty, the power of char- 
 acter," the nobility of the virtuous life. It places em- 
 phasis, not so much upon individual perfection, as upon 
 individual obligation and Tesponsibility to God. It teaches 
 not the art of life, the harmonious being, but the conduct 
 of life, the moral being, and aims to produce the good 
 citizen and the man of character. It aims "to interest the 
 man more in his public than in his private quality," and 
 to bring about "that sublime health which values one 
 moment as another, and makes us great in all conditions, 
 and is the only definition we have of freedom and power" 
 — namely, character. "The secret of culture is to learn, 
 that a few great points steadily reappear, alike in poverty 
 of the obscurest farm, and in the miscellany of metro- 
 politan life, and that these few are alone regarded, — the 
 escape from all false ties ; courage to be what we are ; and 
 love of what is simple and beautiful ; independence and 
 cheerful relation — these are the essentials — these, and the 
 wish to serve, — and to add somewhat to the well-being 
 of men." (Wks. VI. p. 278). 
 
 This diliference in the idea of culture is in a sense 
 racial and national and is of importance to any under- 
 standing of the causes which lay at the basis of Emerson's 
 opinion of Goethe. It is in a way the key to the race- 
 mind or- temper. Coleridge attempted to analyze racial 
 differences in "The Friend," where he characterized the 
 
138 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 English Genius as one that looks to the Past and the 
 Present, practical, careful — "a disposition to avoid ex- 
 tremes in theory and practice and a feeling of the neces- 
 sity of compromise accompanying sense," and the German 
 as one that looks to the Past and the Future, with a 
 "tendency toward encyclopaedic and systematic learning, 
 method, speculation, and a love of completeness and 
 totality." Emerson too has again and again hinted at 
 some such fundamental variance as in ; "Slowsure 
 Britain's secular might, And the German's inward sight ;" 
 or in, the note on culture in the Journals for 1837: "How 
 much meaning the Germans affix to the word, and how 
 unlike to the English sense! The Englishman goes to 
 see a museum or a mountain for itself ; the German for 
 himself ; the Englishman for entertainment, the German 
 for culture. The German is conscious and his aims are 
 great. The Englishman lives from his eyes, and is im- 
 mersed in the apparent world. Our culture comes not 
 alone from the grand and beautiful, but also from the 
 trivial and sordid." The Goethean conception of culture 
 in regard to its tdtimate ends, was essentially moral and 
 looked to practical application. He believed it every 
 man's duty to make the most of himself by developing his 
 own faculties to the utmost of his power within the 
 limitations of his own particular environment and then 
 to surrender this larger self to human-welfare. He con- 
 sidered the man of broad culture most useful to social 
 well-being. As Emerson and the majority of his con- 
 temporaries conceived it in their study of his works and 
 life, it seemed to them essentially egoistic, selfish, aristo- 
 cratic, a thing to be attained by the select few, not by 
 the many, and formative of an aristocracy of culture. 
 This was the message which the "Dichtung und Wahr- 
 heit" brought to them and first revealed to the English- 
 speaking world, said Emerson. "That a man exists for 
 
THE IDEALIST AND THE REALIST. 1 39 
 
 culture ; not foi* what can be accomplished in him," was, 
 he thought, "the expression of an idea — now familiar to 
 the world through the German mind, but a novelty to 
 England Old and New." (Wks. IV, p. 285). He failed 
 to note that the Goethean ideal of self-culture was a 
 means to larger altruistic purpose. To the New Eng- 
 lander as an idealist and democrat, the man of culture 
 was the virtuous man, and culture was the nobihty of the 
 heart or the soul and came direct from God. It was not 
 the possession of fully developed talents and faculties, 
 of a mine of encyclopaedic knowledge and brilliancy of 
 intellect, but it was rather man's relation to his talents 
 and knowledge, his command of them, and his ability to 
 put them to good uses, whether they were manifold or 
 meagre. It was not quantity, but quality that counted. 
 "It is not what talents or genius a man has, but how he 
 is to his talents, that constitutes friendship and char- 
 acter.'' (Wks. VI, p. 193). Always moral strength only 
 was of avail. 
 
 As regards the nature of government we find again 
 the same diversity of opinion, which we have noted as 
 characteristic of the realistic and idealistic points of view. 
 To Emerson, moraHty is the object of government. "The 
 end of all political struggle is to establish morality as the 
 basis of all legislation. It is not free institutions, 'tis not a 
 republic, 'tis not a democracy, that is the end, — no, but only 
 
 the means This is the consolation on which we rest 
 
 in the darkness of the future, and the afflictions of today 
 (1862), that the government of the world is moral, and 
 does destroy what is not." Goethe, however, gave ex- 
 pression to another and characteristic view. He believed 
 that in the world, whether we would have it so or not. 
 Might rules, and that upon Might depends self-preserva- 
 tion ; a Might which desires naught but the morally Right 
 there never has been and never will be. Thus in the 
 
140 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 French Revolution, as in all revolution, he as a contempo- 
 rary could see no real advantage; it seemed to him only 
 a case of Might versus Might. Speaking of the subjuga- 
 tion and division of Poland, he said: — ^"Ich stelle mich 
 hoher als die gewohnlichen platten moraHschen Politiker ; 
 ich spreche es geradezu aus : kein Konig halt Wort, kann 
 es nicht halten, musz stets den gebieterischen Umstanden 
 nachgeben; die Polen waren doch untergangen, muszten 
 nach ihrer ganzen verwirrten Sinnesweise untergehen ; 
 sollte Preuszen mit leeren Handen dabei ausgehen, 
 wahrend Russland und Osterreich zugriffen? Fiir uns 
 arme PhiHster ist die entgegengesetzte Handlungsweise 
 Pflicht, nicht fiir die Machtigen der Erde." 
 
 "Sage rnir, was das fiir Pracht ist? 
 Auszre Grosze, leerer Schein ! 
 O ! zum Henker ! Wo die Macht ist, 
 Ist doch auch das Recht, zu sein." 
 
 (Wke. 4, p. 134). 
 
 Goethe carried his firm trust in the order of nature 
 into his ideas of government and poHtics. His studies 
 of life and nature taught him that power and might ruled 
 everywhere, and that the state was happiest in which 
 the power was invested irt a wise and enlightened ruler 
 who had at heart the welfare of his people. Pie looked 
 upon the state as an organic unit in which each 
 individual played a proper and useful part and thus best 
 served his own ends and those of society. His thought 
 was cosmopolitan and humanitarian, and he refused to 
 be limited by national and racial political prejudice. 
 "Romer patriotismus ! Davor bewahr' uns Gott wie vor 
 einer Riesengestalt ;" Goethe's aims were social in the 
 largest sense. He hated violence and revolution and con- 
 sidered them socially harmful. "Ich basse jeden gewalt- 
 samen Umsturz, weil dabei ebenso viel Gutes vernichtet 
 als gewonnen wird. Ich basse die, welche ihn anfiihren, 
 
THR IDDALIST AND THE KEALIST. I4I 
 
 wie die, welche dazu Ursache geben. Aber bin ich darum 
 kein Freund des Volkes? Denkt denn jeder rechtlich 
 gesinnte Mann etwa anders? Sie wissen, wie sehr ich 
 mich iiber jede Verbesserung freue, welche die Zukunft 
 uns etwa in Aussicht stellt. Aber, wie gesagt, jedes Ge- 
 waltsame, Sprunghafte ist mir in der Seele zuwider, denn 
 es ist nicht naturgemasz."*" 
 
 Here too we have the moral-ideahst contrasted with 
 the realist as regards the nature of government, the Amer- 
 ican proud' of his political ideal and its possibilities, and 
 the European, conservative and looking to the immediate 
 exigency of order and social well-being irrespective of 
 any immediate moral limitation. Emerson with true 
 American instinct sees the solution of all political diffi- 
 culties in a republican form of government whereas 
 Goethe looks upon a republic as an impractical idea\ and 
 regards an "enlightened-despotism" as more in accord 
 with the natural order and more practically serviceable. 
 "Democracy," says Emerson, "is better for us, because 
 the religious sentiment of the present time accords better 
 with it." The formation of character, the culture of men 
 is the highest end of government, he says. "To educate 
 the wise man the State exists." It is made up of indi- 
 viduals, whom it is the State's aim to educate, and there- 
 by improve its institutions, — and then "the rnoral senti- 
 ment will write the law of the land." (Wks. Ill, p. 204). 
 This too is distinctly the ideal of Schiller and Goethe, but 
 Goethe looks to its realization under a monarchical form 
 of government rather than in a republic, considering the 
 present state of social advancement. 
 
 The great moral teaching of Goethe's riper works is 
 self-renunciation; this becomes the message in "Faust," 
 "Meister," and in his other mature productions, and this 
 it is that Emerson failed to find, especially in specific 
 practice in the life of the poet. The idealist and the 
 realist again diverge in their interpretation. For Goethe 
 
142 EilliRSOX AND GOETHE. 
 
 self-renunciation is to be practised for the sake of the 
 individual as a social-being, for social-welfare ; it is a 
 doctrine not of personal loss, but of subordination, the 
 surrender of the individual in the interests of the uni- 
 versal, of the momentary desire for the sake of the lasting 
 good, of the whim to procure the deeper happiness. Goethe 
 does not forget the self ; the individual freely denies him- 
 self of his desire that greater profit may come to him in the 
 form of happy and cheerful labor among his fellows. But 
 Emerson rather scorns such a standpoint: he regards 
 man as a moral-being primarily, not as a social-being. 
 Self-renunciation is of benefit to the individual primarily 
 as a moral-being. There is a spiritual compensation and 
 thereby a practical one. Self-sacrifice is God-service. In 
 Emerson the doctrine of self-renunciation was not a 
 thing learned from the vicissitudes of experience as a 
 safeguard for self-preservation, but it was born in the 
 blood and was the cardinal virtue of the Puritanic con- 
 science. It was man's duty to renounce his own sinful 
 purposes and serve God. "Society is everywhere in con- 
 spiracy against the manhood of every one of its mem- 
 bers Whoso would be a man must be a noncon- 
 formist." (Wks. II, p. 49). Therefore man need not 
 give up his interests for the sake of society or for his 
 own safety as a member of society. Rather he should 
 forfeit all, his own safety as a social-unit and the entire 
 social-state, if need be, for the sake of Truth, for the 
 sake of the Moral-ideal. 
 
 " 'Tis Man's perdition to be safe 
 When for the Truth he ought to die.'' 
 
 Such is Emerson's ideal of the representative man ; 
 one whose chief aim it is to become an image of God, 
 one who is "great from nature;" through whom God's 
 spirit flows unobstructed and who seeks with all his pow- 
 ers God's ends, usefulness with every muscle, and truth 
 
THi; IDEAUST AND THE REALIST. 1 43 
 
 in every thought. (J. II, p. 535). "I admire great men 
 of all classes," he writes, "those who stand for facts, and 
 for thoughts; I like the first Caesar; and Charles V of 
 Spain ; and Charles XII of Sweden ; Richard Plantagenet ; 
 and Bonaparte of France. I applaud a sufficient man, 
 an officer equal to his office ; captains, ministers, senators. 
 I like a master standing firm on legs of iron, well-born, 
 rich, handsome, eloquent, loaded with advantages, draw- 
 ing all men by fascination into tributaries and supporters 
 of his power. Sword and staflf, or talents sword-like and 
 staff-like, carry on the work of the world. But I find 
 him greater, when he can abolish himself and all heroes, 
 by letting in this element of reason, irrespective of per- 
 sons ; this subtiliser, and irrisistible upward force, into 
 our thought, destroying individualism ; the power so greaj;, 
 that the potentate is nothing.'' This latter is the type of 
 man which Emerson presented in his lectures as repre- 
 sentative : with one exception men of thought rather than 
 of action, literary men, philosophers, students of life and 
 men of moral import. Thus Plato, the philosopher — 
 ■ "this eldest Goethe," in whom "intellect is always moral," 
 who gave an "ethico-intellectual expression to every 
 truth ;" Swedenborg, the mystic — free from egoism, with 
 depth of moral-insight, though not a pure genius, for 
 "with a force of many men he could never break the 
 umbilical cord which held him to nature, and he did not 
 rise to the platform of pure genius;" Montaigne, the 
 sceptic — the "considerer, the prudent," not merely the 
 doubter ; frank, honest, sincere, yet trusting too much in 
 the "suspected and reviled Intellect, to the Understand- 
 ing, the Mephistopheles, to the gymnastics of talent 
 
 This is hobgoblin the first ; and, though it has been the 
 subject of much elegy, in our 19th century, from Byron, 
 Goethe, and other poets of less fame "; Shake- 
 speare, the poet, who yet was Shakespeare the player; 
 Napoleon and Goethe, selfish, egoistic, realistic. These 
 
144 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 are typical and representative of Emerson's ideal, and yet 
 not purely so, for there is none without his failing. The 
 ideal Christ alone could represent the Spirit in its purer 
 essence. Emerson's selection, however, consisted of men 
 who had a perception of Truth and divined the secret 
 operations of the law of laws. 
 
 Goethe's choice of great men was typically different, 
 as was Carlyle's. Goethe admired the man of genius and 
 made no moral qualification. He paid respect to the 
 genius of Napoleon, to the "Damon," because in its work- 
 ings he saw the expression of some great natural agency 
 that had to be as it was. Therein he found the essence 
 of all morality for to him naught could be morally sound 
 which was in direct opposition to the laws of nature. And 
 S'O Carlyle admired the Heroes, "the leaders of men," the 
 modellers, patterns, creators; strong, virile, doers of the 
 deed as well as speakers of the word; not merely re- 
 ceptive and resigned, but active, fighters. Carlyle would 
 have had mankind bow in submission before these larger 
 natures and worship in them the hero. Emerson's in- 
 dividualism is more democratic — great men should be re- 
 spected and served, but in turn must serve; "great men 
 exist that there may be greater men." Every man is a 
 new creation and for every man there is opportunity. 
 Emerson places his emphasis on an ethical standard : 
 Goethe and Carlyle upon a dynamic one. To Carlyle and 
 Goethe, the great man can not help but be representative 
 of the Ideal: to Emerson, the Idealist only is great and 
 truly representative. Emerson sees man in God. Goethe 
 studies God in man. "Great men are they who see that 
 spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts 
 rule the world." (Wks. VIII, p. 229). 
 
 To Emerson and to most of the English and Ameri- 
 can critics Goethe represented primarily mind and intel- 
 lect; in all things the emphasis was placed upon the true 
 and the beautiful. Goethe's mind, it seemed to them, 
 
THE IDEALIST AND THE REAUST. I45 
 
 acted as a court of inquiry in search for truth. He typi- 
 fied intellectual activity, knowledge, wisdom. And in 
 this regard Emerson considered his interest and energy 
 wrongly stressed, for in Emerson's philosophy the good 
 was greater than and inclusive of the true, and the will 
 of equal importance with the intellect. "It is for good, 
 it is to good, that all works. Surely it is not to prove or 
 show the truth of things, — that sounds a little cold or 
 scholastic, — no, it is for benefit that all subsists." Affec- 
 tion blends, he said, intellect disjoins; and he criticised 
 Voltaire as one who "forsook good, aiming at truth, and 
 thus grew up half, or less than half, a man — a colorless 
 plant grown in the dark." A critic in the Christian Ex- 
 aminer in 1856, writing doubtless under the influence of 
 the Emerson essays, makes a like distinction. He takes 
 up and compares Goethe and Washington, the one as 
 typifying the genius of intellect, the other that of char- 
 acter, and asks : Which is chief ? He estimates a man 
 by the greatness or magnanimity of his soul; not by his 
 power or knowledge, but by his spirit of love. And he 
 says of Goethe : "So we look upon such a one as Goethe, 
 perhaps the greatest sayer of things in this latter age ; 
 we read the tale of his life impartially through ; we want 
 to like him as much as possible ; we examine his conduct 
 and penetrate to the interior spirit from which it springs ; 
 and we say to him : we delight in your gif tS) — we are very 
 thankful for your astonishing powers, — we gladly allow 
 you your large and masterly place in the world, — we will 
 appreciate and praise God for what is useful and instruct- 
 ive — and very useful and instructive it is — in your kind 
 also, — but pardon us we cannot love you ! We reserve 
 our love for him who was a doer (Washington). The 
 genius of character in a great man transcends the genius 
 of intellect." Emerson reflects this same spirit when he 
 notes in the Journals, 1864: "It was said lately of 
 Goethe's correspondence with the Duke of Weimar that 
 
146 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 the Duke's letters are the best. The experience is fa- 
 miliar day by day, that of two persons, one of character 
 and one of intellect, character will rule and intellect must 
 bow. It is interesting in Goethe's case because of his 
 patronizing tone to all the world." (Wks. VIIT, p. 433 
 and 317).^^ 
 
 The idealist always demands the heroic; and this was 
 precisely what the Transcendentalists failed to find in 
 their reading of Goethe. "Unless to Thought is added 
 Will, Apollo is an imbecile," said Emerson, and in an- 
 other and more famous passage he expressed the same 
 belief : — 
 
 "So nigh is grandeur to our dust. 
 
 So near is God to Man, 
 When Duty whispers low, Thou must, 
 The youth replies, I can." 
 
 In Goethe they missed the essentially manly, strong, and 
 fearless hero, who was willing to sacrifice his all for the 
 sake of a principle or a moral -good. George Bancroft 
 felt this keenly when he wrote of Goethe in the article of 
 1824: "He has sketched the sorrows which spring from 
 the imagination, and the evils to which men have become 
 
 exposed by the vices of refinement he presents the 
 
 field of battle at evening, when the weary are returning 
 from the conflicts of life with mangled limbs and heavy 
 hearts. He depicts men driven to helpless despair 
 and suicide by hopeless desire, women languishing from 
 a passion, which their innocence condemns, persons of 
 delicate sensibility brooding over unreal pains, till they 
 turn every object in nature into nutriment for their weak- 
 ness." Feeling this lack, finding in him counsel and wis- 
 dom for all of life's problems, but never the divine spark 
 of inspiration which lifts the soul to new heights and new 
 hopes, Emerson could confess in speaking of the 'Wei- 
 marish art friends' to a lack of the heroic and holy in 
 
THE IDEALIST AND THE REAEIST. 147 
 
 them, a want of human sympathy — "They do not illum- 
 inate me ; they do not edify me. Plutarch's heroes cheer, 
 
 exalt " Indeed Goethe the realist presented them 
 
 with no truly heroic character. He portrayed humanity 
 as he found it or typified its strivings as he saw them, 
 drawing always mainly from his own personal experi- 
 ence. Schiller loves to present an idealist, a visionary, 
 maybe, in his struggle with the realities of life; the con- 
 flict in his dramas is always essentially a moral one : as a 
 thorough-going idealist he calls us from the slumbers of 
 sense to a realization of human freedom in the mind and 
 the will.*- "Werft die Angst des Irdischen von euch ! 
 Fliehet aus dem engen, dumpfen Leben in des Ideales 
 Reich !" Ibsen calls upon man to attempt the impos- 
 sible,*'" and Emerson recommends the counsel — "Always 
 do what you are afraid to do." In Emerson's conception 
 the hero is placed in a war-like attitude to all evil, and 
 thereby he affirms his ability to cope single-handed with 
 an infinite army of enemies and to persist therein. "To 
 this military attitude of the soul we give the name of 
 Heroism. Its rudest form is the contempt for safety and 
 ease, which makes the attractiveness of war. It is a self- 
 trust which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plen- 
 titude of its energy and power to repair the harms it may 
 suffer. The hero is a mind of such balance that no dis- 
 turbances can shake his will; but pleasantly, and as it 
 were merrily, he advances to his own music, alike in 
 frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal disso- 
 luteness." Heroism is defined as an obedience to a secret 
 impulse of an individual's character. It is obedience to 
 the divine call. "Every heroic act measures itself by its 
 contempt of some external good. But it finds its own 
 success at last, and then the prudent also extol." (Wks. 
 II, p. 250). The hero's pathway is one of health and 
 benefit to mankind, though it lead him to disaster and 
 death personally. 
 
148 EMERSON AND GOETHli. 
 
 In Goethe's works no "hero" of this exalted type is 
 presented. The disciples of Kant, Emerson and Ibsen, 
 demand the man of action, of self-command and strength 
 of will, not the reflective or vacillating type ; but Goethe 
 was too lenient and charitable to humanity. The fault 
 lay in his own nature, for he approached life from an 
 aesthetic standpoint and not as a militant reformer. All 
 of his representative characters are partial projections 
 of his own personality, its longing and distress, its striv- 
 ing and error, its intense humanity. Neither Faust nor 
 Wilhelm Meister can be called in any way heroic in the 
 Emersonian sense. Goethe looked always to the organic 
 growth of the individual nature, which in the course of 
 natural process should blossom forth to ripeness as does 
 the tree or the plant." The freedom of the will in the 
 ideal, by which man overcomes the physical, and which 
 is the hopeful inspiration of Kant and Emerson, and 
 Ibsen and Schiller, is not the central teaching of the 
 Goethean wisdom. "Angstlich aber ist es anzusehen," he 
 says, "wenn ein starker Charakter, um sich selbst getreu 
 zu bleiben, treulos gegen die Welt wird und, um inner- 
 lich wahr zu sein, das Wirkliche fiir eine Luge erklart 
 und sich dabei ganz gleichgiiltig erzeigt, ob man ihn fiir 
 halstarrig, verstockt, eigensinnig oder fiir lacherlich 
 halte. " But Emerson would bother but little about the 
 opinion of the world about him; truth to self, inner truth 
 must be secured at all hazards. "Heroism is the extreme 
 of individual nature. It feels and never reasons, and 
 therefore is always right. It works in contradiction to 
 the voice of the great and good." Emerson demands 
 always the directly manly. Goethe's strength in his art 
 as an interpreter of mankind is shown at its best in por- 
 trayal of feminine rather than masculine characters. He 
 was among the greatest interpreters of woman in litera- 
 ture and represented her in eternal types, but in repre- 
 sentation of men he was rather attracted to problematic 
 
THE MISREPRESENTATION OE GOETHE. I49 
 
 natures, such as were temperamentally introspective and 
 complex like Werther, Tasso, Orestes, Eduard, Wilhelm 
 Meister, and Faust. He was not interested in the 'manly' 
 man in the Emersonian sense of the word, and the New 
 England Transcendentalists felt this as one of his chief 
 limitations. True to their inherent nature, they demanded 
 the man whose presence was the source of inspiration 
 and universal enthusiasm, who aroused the admiration of 
 all classes and of all social extremes, the manly idealist 
 and the moral character. Emerson cites Lincoln as "per- 
 haps the most remarkable example of this class that we 
 have ever seen." (Wks. VIII, p. 318). Goethe presents 
 man as he knew him, the striving, the aspiration and the 
 error, the infirmity and the despair, the sorrow and the 
 suffering, of those who yield to individual impulse or 
 obey their own inclination. And by such representation 
 of humanity he teaches the wisdom of self-control, of 
 self-resignation in the conduct of life, and of service for 
 others as the highway to individual happiness. He is 
 always the realist and the "Post of the Actual," for by 
 means of the comprehension and control of the actual it 
 is that he hopes to attain the Ideal. His sympathies with 
 struggling humanity were too large to permit him to re- 
 gard in aught but an affectionate and forgiving spirit the 
 waywardness and weakness of his fellowmen. Human- 
 nature, as he knew it, contained too much of the good to 
 te ever utterly bad, and hence he demanded not self- 
 annihilation in the devotion to the Ideal, but rather self- 
 discipline as the means to perfection of character and 
 happiness, and effective and useful labor on the part of 
 the individual as a man among men. 
 
 IV. — 2. The Misrepresentation of Goethe. 
 
 Emerson once said, "Our English nature and genius 
 has made us the worst critics of Goethe" (Wks. VIII, p. 
 ,69), and thereby showed that he recognized at least to 
 
150 EMUESON AN'D GOUTHi:. 
 
 some extent the limitations of his own critical position. 
 Both as individuals and as members of a larger social — or 
 race — consciousness, the American critics found it impos- 
 sible, except in a few individual cases, to see in Goethe 
 aught but the representative of a civilization and an age 
 which were foreign to their ideal. Even though they thor- 
 oughly agreed with him in many of the larger aspects of 
 thought and prized him as a cosmic-thinker and intellec- 
 tual genius they could not reconcile this latter with his 
 seeming indifference to more particular moral issues and 
 to what they regarded as the unpardonable paganism of 
 his moral life. They read all sorts of hostile criticism of 
 him, and their misunderstanding naturally took refuge in 
 attitudes of distrust, prejudice, and reproach. 
 
 The New Englander regarded the world from the 
 threshold of the Spirit and saw in all things a moral end. 
 The primary criterion in his mind was always, as we 
 have seen, the religious conscience. Civilization in his 
 estimation must be dependent upon moral principle. 
 Goethe observed all things calmly as they were and asked, 
 not to what common end do they exist, or what may we 
 know of them, but, simply, what are these things? So 
 Emerson, the Transcendentalist and Puritan, in his con- 
 sideration of Goethe naturally asks himself, to what end? 
 What moral purpose has this man's activity on earth 
 served? In how far has he been an instrument of the 
 Divine Will and how has he helped redeem mankind? 
 Emerson judges Goethe from the standpoint of his own 
 extreme religious and moral idealism. His criticism is 
 that of a distinct and original mind and is at the same 
 time the voice of New England Transcendentalism and of 
 the Puritanic American conscience. For Goethe's energy 
 and achievement, his artistic skill and poetic mastery, 
 there are always words of respect and commendation. But 
 in the supreme test of value in man or work, in the moral 
 value, Goethe is almost universally, condemned as insuffi- 
 
THE MIvSREPRESENTATlON OP GOETHE. 151 
 
 cient. To these critics he was therefore "right as a 
 genius, wrong as a character; the best instructor in the 
 use of means but not ends;" a reahst and man-of-the- 
 world, when he should have been an ideaHst, a Post- 
 priest, a Physician of humanity; or, as Margaret Fuller 
 so excellently put it, "plucking flowers and hammering 
 stones instead of looking at the stars.'' 
 
 The judgment of Emerson and American critics of 
 Goethe was partly determined by the current prejudice 
 against the German poet and partly by the absolute stand- 
 ards of their own moral idealism. This explains their 
 misunderstanding of his genius. They made little effort 
 to approach him sympathetically and thus they could not 
 appreciate his point of view. They experienced much 
 the same difficulties that Schiller met with when he first 
 came into personal contact with Goethe and found him- 
 self so strangely rebuffed by the latter's apparently calm 
 and patronizing indifference. Schiller, however, in the 
 pursuance of his philosophical studies and his direct in- 
 tercourse with the elder poet was enabled to overcome 
 his uneasy displeasure and arrive at a sympathetic and 
 friendly understanding of the Goethean genius. Goethe 
 and Schiller came to thoroughly understand one another 
 and although they approached life from diiferent points 
 of view, they found that in their estimation of its prime 
 values they were in mutual agreement.^'' Had the idealist 
 Emerson possessed the opportunity of closer communica- 
 tion with the real Goethe, we believe that his admiration 
 would have been less restricted ; and the same is true, 
 indeed, of the greater majority of those moral-idealists 
 who take up the reading of Goethe and find themselves 
 repulsed by his seemingly cold, egoistic, and purely artistic 
 appreciation of nature and humanity. Here, perhaps, 
 lies the explanation of the strange unwilhngness of the 
 average American student of literature to pay uncondi- 
 tional homage to Goethe, and for this reason we find him 
 
152 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 yielding but too readily to the historical prejudice against 
 the German poet and inclined to accept a mythical Goethe, 
 who, to a great extent, is a product of the misinterpreta- 
 tion of the writers of the Transcendental movement 
 in America. 
 
 Emerson found in Goethe no definite and compre- 
 hensive system of principles which he could accept as 
 the peculiarly Goethean solution to all the mysteries of 
 nature. Goethe presented him with no stereotyped, teleo- 
 logical explanation of life and nature. He gave a reflec- 
 tion of life as a whole but no explanation of it, no one 
 particular ideal in which and for which all things had their 
 being. To Goethe every object was sufficient unto itself, 
 and in his studies and investigations he sought objectively 
 to understand the nature of each object and thus explain 
 the individual phenomena. This led him in his scientific 
 and aesthetic studies to the idea of the Type as being the 
 essentially permanent bond of unity in the constantly 
 changing world of phenomena, again a characteristically 
 realistic interpretation, unlike the Kantian Ding-an-sich 
 or the Platonic Idea which were idealistic, unattainable, 
 or superior representations of which the empiric world 
 could offer only a poor reflection.*'^ Goethe preferred to 
 revere the supernatural as suggested in the natural world, 
 but did not presume to qualify the ever-present mystery 
 by any one specific and thus limiting idea. He did not 
 pretend to solve the "open-secret" but merely to study it. 
 "Der ^lensch ist nicht geboren, die Probleme der Welt zu 
 losen, wohl aber zu suchen, wo das Problem angeht, und 
 sich sodann in der Grenze des Begreiflichen zu halten. 
 Die Handlungen des Universums zu messen reichen seine 
 Fahigkeiten nicht bin, und in das Weltall \'ernunft 
 bringen zu Wollen, ist bei seinem kleinen Standpunkte ein 
 sehr vergebliches Bestreben. Die Vernunf t des Menschen 
 und die \^ernunft der Gottheit sind zwei sehr verschie- 
 dene Dinge."*"' Thus Goethe could not make his general 
 
THE MISKBPRItSENTATTON O]? GOETHE. 153 
 
 philosophy subservient to ethical teaching; he did not ap- 
 proach nature as did Emerson with a moral premise, but 
 returned from his studies of nature with the firm faith 
 that in her workings was to -be discovered the only true 
 and final morality. Emerson, then, and the Transcen- 
 dental-idealists could and did find in Goethe unlimited 
 range and versatility of genius and wisdom and counsel 
 upon the nature and the conduct of life, and in this re- 
 spect they paid homage to him as a "recorder," a "sage," 
 and a practical-guide, and were grateful when they found 
 in him "comment and consent" to their own speculation. 
 But it was "lofty flight" not "wide range" that they were 
 looking for, and in Goethe they were able to find no one 
 great, compelling, and all-containing moral ideal, such as 
 they themselves projected, which could inspire them and 
 lift them aloft out of the shackles of sense into the realm 
 of ' pure spirit. Hence they found him "worldly," a 
 "scholar," and missed in him the priest and the poet. 
 
 Emerson, then, failed to appreciate the real Goethe 
 partly because he went to him with his own limited and 
 uncompromising philosophy of life and thus made him- 
 self incapable of attaining to any just and adequate con- 
 ception of the unity of Goethe's activity and thought. He 
 was attracted to him because he was able to find so much 
 of positive worth in him and rebuffed because he found 
 so much which in his own mind he was obliged to reject 
 as of negative and morally harmful import. This was 
 true of the Transcendentalists on the whole, and, indeed, 
 Carlyle himself was at times not entirely immune in this 
 respect. In the conviction of their own moral security 
 and authority lay at once the strength and the weakness 
 of the position of the puritanic critics. It was their own 
 stern and unyielding moral-sense which prejudiced them 
 against Goethe before they were really able to under- 
 stand and appreciate in him what they themselves sorely 
 needed, narnely, tolerance and sympathy for all the things 
 
154 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 of life. They were arbitrary in their opinions and stub- 
 bornly self-willed, and especially intolerant of whatever 
 was not pleasing to their own taste and fancy. They read 
 themselves into Goethe in so far as they could and when 
 they could go no farther they assumed a hostile attitude. 
 Whatever they could not understand and confirm seemed 
 unworthy and immoral to them and they proceeded to 
 ignore or denounce it. They were keen in their criticism 
 from the point of view of their arbitrary construction but 
 they lacked a calm, objective, and comprehensive knowl- 
 edge of the man and his work. Their criticism of Goethe 
 is at every step also a criticism of themselves. Emerson 
 himself realized this, when he wrote: "For rightly, every 
 man is a channel through which heaven floweth, and, 
 whilst I fancied I was criticising him, I was censuring or 
 rather terminating my own soul." (Wks. Ill, p. 242). 
 
 In a sense, these American critics of Goethe present 
 a nineteenth-century ethical judgment of the German 
 poet. It is in this respect that the ethical doctrines of 
 such idealists as Emerson, Ibsen, and Tolstoi, stand in 
 contrast to those of Goethe, Shaftesbury, and Spinoza. 
 The mature Goethe teaches social-responsibility, whereas 
 Emerson, Ibsen, and Tolstoi adopt a rather militant atti- 
 tude against the institutions of society, the latter two in 
 particular advocating social-reform and all three teaching 
 individual responsibility to the Ideal or God. It was the 
 social-reformer, the redeemer, which Pollen, echoing the 
 "Young German" criticism, missed in Goethe, and his 
 views, we know, helped to color the New England atti- 
 tude, whereas the puritanic conscience of New England 
 strongly emphasized man's responsibihty to God alone 
 and not to society or to his fellow-man. 
 
 The New England critics did not know the real 
 Goethe. They had great difficulties to surmount in their 
 study, and aside from their own arbitrariness of judg- 
 ment there were other influences abroad in the community 
 
THE MISREPRESENTATION OE GOETHE. 155 
 
 which made an impartial appreciation well-nigh impos- 
 sible. First of all there were the difficulties of the lan- 
 guage and the general hostility to things German and 
 Goethean. We know that Emerson never could read 
 German readily, and an analysis of his critical opinion of 
 the more significant works leads us to conclude that when- 
 ever he could obtain a good translation and thus read the 
 work in his own tongue his appreciation of its particular 
 merits and larger significance was always keen and happy 
 and without bitterness. For this reason the "Meister" 
 and the "Tasso" exercised greater appeal to him, and so 
 too perhaps the "Helena" as explained in Carlyle's essay, 
 and the Goethe of Margaret Fuller's translation of Ecker- 
 mann. "Eckermann was full of fine things and, helps 
 very much in the study of Goethe." (J. IV, p. 201). But 
 works of such complexity from a linguistic standpoint as 
 the "Faust" and the "Iphigenie," and the "Wahlverwand- 
 schaften" were doubtless almost sealed books to him. 
 Although he must have known how highly these works 
 were esteemed by those of his friends who were more 
 successful students of the language, writers like Margaret 
 Fuller and F. H. Hedge, he seems to have made scant 
 use of their opinions unless he could verify them himself 
 in his own reading, and this, we feel, was largely un- 
 successful without a translation. Collections of aphoristic 
 sayings such as the "Spriiche," were a storehouse of 
 thought to him, and, as it required no sustained effort to 
 penetrate their meaning, were not so difficult of trans- 
 lation. 
 
 Moreover, the New Englanders were confronted at 
 the outset by a mythical Goethe who had come to them 
 from over the water in three distinct interpretations. 
 Among his own countrymen the real Goethe was not 
 known and appreciated. The Romanticists had hailed 
 him as the artist and apostle of self-culture, as we have 
 seen, and had ignored or denounced his practical wisdom 
 
156 RMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 and teaching of resignation and service. They lauded in 
 him only what they themselves could accept and com- 
 mend. Menzel, Follen, and the "Young Germans" on the 
 whole attacked this same Goethe whom the Romanticists 
 had glorified; they decried an art and culture which 
 served no ulterior moral or human purpose, and as they 
 were in part entirely mis-led in their interpretation of 
 Goethe and found only certain phases of his activity and 
 thought emphasized, they vilified him in most bitter terms. 
 The Romanticists had emphasized the aesthetic side of 
 Goethe's life-work and ignored its ethical import ; "Young 
 Germany" attacked Goethe the artist and man of culture 
 and failed to find the man of mature ethical judgment and 
 character and practical social teaching. Both of these 
 views of Goethe were, as we have seen, current in New 
 England. And besides there was the prevalent interpre- 
 tation of Carlyle, who emphasized in Goethe above all the 
 man of wisdom and practical ethical counsel, the teacher 
 and thinker, the poet-sage and man-of-letters, whose pri- 
 mary faculty was intellect and depth and force of vision. 
 Thus three sides of the Goethean genius were presented to 
 the students in New England and each particular point- 
 of-view strongly stressed, but there was no attempt any- 
 where to ascertain the validity of this criticism and to 
 study Goethe with the intention of finding a unity in his 
 thought and life. Misconception and misunderstanding 
 of this nature have given rise to the Goethe Myth, which 
 still prevails among many educated circles in America. 
 
 America knew Goethe the artist, the pagan, and the 
 sage, and the New England critics reflected all three 
 points-of-view, but failed of synthetic construction. They 
 appreciated him according to their own limited vision, 
 and did not see that these three phases of his genius were 
 organically related and stood forth as typical, though par- 
 tial, expressions of a larger central personality. They 
 were eager to grasp the "wisdom" of Goethe and to hail 
 
the; misrepresentation op goethe. 157 
 
 him as a sage, because the New Englander and the Amer- 
 ■ ican, on the whole, placed the utmost value upon educa- 
 tion and practical knowledge. But, aside from this, theit 
 idealism and severe religious conscience could not under- 
 stand his larger hellenic spirit, which seemed to them the 
 limited expression of a mere artist and a pagan, of a 
 mind, in short, which they could only regard as lacking 
 in the highest and noblest moral purpose. 
 
 _ Hence we read of Goethe as a man in whom intellect 
 and mind preponderated and in whom character was lack- 
 ing, a selfish egoist whose aim as an artist did not redound 
 to the highest good of mankind. The intellectual and 
 aesthetic sides were always emphasized, while few critics 
 seem to have felt the deep ethical value of Goethe's works. 
 For the most part they considered him right as a genius, 
 but wrong as a character; a "poetic-artist," not a "pro- 
 phet-priest;" a scholar and writer, but not a "redeemer." 
 They eagerly read the Goethe of Eckermann and the 
 "Spriiche," where they found the ripened wisdom and 
 counsel of a man whom they regarded as a worldly seer, 
 quietly and impersonally surveying life's vicissitudes and 
 problems, but, except in some few instances such as Mar- 
 garet Fuller and F. H. Hedge, they were unappreciative 
 of the larger Goethe of the "Iphigenie," the "Wahlver- 
 wandschaften," the "Meister," and the "Faust." For 
 this very reason they failed to see that Goethe's finai 
 estimate of the values of life, although he arrived at it 
 in an entirely different manner, was very similar to their 
 own, and it was this that led them to grant him, with 
 JVlenzel-like prejudice, talent but not genius. 
 
 From the point-of-view of Goethe scholarship it would 
 be an easy task to cite from the works and correspond- 
 ence endless examples of Goethe's appreciation of the 
 spiritual values of life, and thus show that Emerson and 
 the Transcendentalists were simply ignorant of this phase 
 of his life and thought. Indeed it would be an interesting 
 
158 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 task to examine critically all of the adverse criticism of 
 Goethe, whether Anglo-American or European, and show 
 how in most cases the attitude taken has been, whether 
 consciously or unconsciously, the result of either a mis- 
 understanding or an ignorance of Goethe's character and 
 philosophy. The student would have to deal directly 
 with the great Myth which has grown up about Goethe's 
 name, and has been the result mainly of the opposition 
 to which he has been subjected at the hands of many of 
 his militant and personally prejudiced contemporaries and 
 successors, who knew him only partly and consequently 
 misrepresented him — a Myth which modern Goethe- 
 scholarship has shown to be baseless and misleading. For 
 our purposes, we can only hint at the salient errors of the 
 American critical-attitude, and, with especial attention to 
 Emerson and the Transcendentalists, show in a few words 
 how they misrepresented Goethe ; first, as being a sage 
 and purely intellectual ; secondly, as a pagan and thus im- 
 moral; and thirdly, as a mere artist, selfish, egoistic, and 
 blind to the higher function of poetry and culture in the 
 spiritual life. 
 
 Emerson, Theodore Parker, and many others consid- 
 ered Goethe chiefly as being dominated by mind and in- 
 tellect in constant search for the true and not the good, 
 and we recall the writer in the Christian Examiner, and 
 also Emerson in his Journals, who presented him as 
 typifying the genius of intellect rather than that of ac- 
 tivity and character, and thus showed themselves sadly 
 ignorant of Goethe's fundamental axiom : "Es ist nicht 
 genug, zu wissen, man musz auch anwenden; es ist nicht 
 genug, zu wollen, man musz auch tun." ( Wke. IV, p. 241 ) . 
 Love and affection were of greater moment and far more 
 vital in the life of every man, contended the New Eng- 
 enders ; affection joins, synthesizes, whereas intellect dis- 
 joins and analyzes. But in their reading of Goethe they 
 seem to have failed to note that Goethe in his great 
 
THE MISREPRESENTATION OF GOETHE. I59 
 
 works repeatedly and most firmly placed the emphasis 
 upon this very point as being the central organizing force 
 of our being. IvOve, he would say, is the very crown of 
 nature*' and life, the spirit which unites all things and 
 by means of which man is raised aloft to higher being. 
 
 "So ist es die allmachtige Liebe, 
 Die alles bildet, alles liegt." 
 
 ( "Faust" — 1 1872-3) . 
 
 or as aptly expressed in another passage: — 
 
 "Was auch als Wahrheit oder Fabel 
 In tausend Biichern dir ersclieint, 
 Das alles ist ein Turm zu Babel, 
 Wenn es die Liebe nicht vereint." 
 
 ( Wke. 4, p. 59) • 
 
 Emerson counsels us to give all to love, freely and un- 
 selfishly, for in love is to be found true being, and Goethe 
 teaches us in the final words of "Faust" that man's salva- 
 tion lies in mighty endeavor permeated by a pure love of 
 humanity. Both poets would agree at once that love is the 
 essentially divine spark in humanity by which man is 
 purified and ennobled, and that in the spiritual purity 
 of its earthly manifestation he ascends to God. Or, as 
 Emerson puts it in the famous lines : 
 
 "Heartily know, 
 When half-gods go, 
 The gods arrive." 
 
 (Wks. 9, p. 92). 
 
 and Goethe in the "Divan" (Wke. 5, p. 127) : 
 
 "Ungehemmt mit heiszera Triebe 
 Laszt sich da Icein Ende finden, 
 Bis im Anschaun ew'ger Liebe 
 Wir verschweben, wir verschwinden." 
 
 It is only by means of love for and in his work that 
 man can achieve any success, thought Goethe, and it is 
 by virtue of ceaseless striving and labor for a larger un- 
 
l6o EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 selfish end and by divine grace as symbolized in woman's 
 love that Faust is enabled to attain to higher celestial 
 spheres of being. "Die Erde wird durch Liebe frei, 
 Durch Taten wird sie grosz." (Wke. 2, p. 238). The 
 Goethean representation of God in the "Prolog in Flim- 
 mel" is primarily that of a poet who recognizes the wis- 
 dom of love and not the love of wisdom ; — 
 
 "Doch ihr, die echten Gottersohne, 
 Erfreut euch der lebendig reichen Schone ! 
 Das Werdende, das ewig wirkt und lebt, 
 Umfass' euch mit der Liebe holdeii Schranken, 
 Und was in scliwankender Erscheinung schwebt, 
 Befestiget mit dauernden Gedanken !" 
 
 (Wke. 13, p. 16). 
 
 But Emerson, as we have seen, did not appreciate the 
 deeper significance of the "Faust," was more or less fa- 
 miliar with the "Helena" act of the Second Part and 
 judged it as an independent work, and termed the opening 
 angel-choruses of the Prolog "magazine or squirt poetry." 
 He missed entirely its spiritual and optimistic message, 
 finding it disagreeably modern, sceptical, and painfully 
 negative, accusing "the author as well as the times." The 
 pessimistic strains of Faust's early monologues and the 
 Gretchen-tragedy, which he could not judge in its true 
 organic relation to the drama as a whole, undoubtedly 
 offended him and prejudiced him against the work. 
 
 The moral depth of the "Iphigenie" too seems to have 
 in no way impressed Emerson. It was to him, as we have 
 seen, a modern-antique and paste-jewel and he evidently 
 preferred the ancient Greek versions. Its spiritual and 
 religious significance passed by unnoticed, even though 
 Margaret Fuller and others drew particular attention to 
 the work in this regard. 
 
 To the student of Goethe this seems exceedingly 
 strange and unfortunate, for in none of his works has 
 he appealed more directly to the spirit and soul of human- 
 
TH^ MISREPRESliNTATION OJ? GOETHE. l6l 
 
 life, and none of his works is so completely pervaded by 
 religious piety. If any of Goethe's poems should have 
 appealed to Emerson it is the "Iphigenie," because in it 
 the human soul is bared to God and the principal char- 
 acter, the priestess, with womanly instinct places her trust 
 only in the intuitions of the Spirit. "Ich untersuche nicht, 
 ich fiihle nur," says Iphigenie, and of the gods she says : 
 "Sie reden nur durch unser Herz zu uns.'' In no one of 
 Goethe's larger works do we find a more typically Emer- 
 sonian spirit. Iphigenie teaches the people over whom she 
 serves as priestess the benevolence of the deity, — 
 
 "Denn die Unsterblichen lieben der Menschen 
 Weit verbreitete gute Geschlechter, 
 Und sie fristen das fliichtige Leben 
 Gerne dem Sterblichen, wollen ihm gerne 
 Ihres eigenen, ewigen Himmels 
 Mitgenieszender frohliches Anschaun 
 Eine Weile gonnen und lassen." 
 
 and she has learned the wisdom and virtue of obedience 
 and resignation in harmony with the Divine Spirit : — • 
 
 "Von Jugend auf hab ich gelernt gehorchen, 
 Erst meinen Eltern und dann einer Gottheit, 
 Und folgsam fiihlt ich immer meine Seele 
 Am Schonsten frei " 
 
 Goethe nowhere presents a character more typically heroic 
 in the Emersonian sense than in the person of Iphigenie, 
 and in no work does he express his own religious instinct 
 more firmly and purely. Later in life, in 1827, during 
 the period of his ripest thought and wisdom, he briefly 
 characterized the central theme of the drama in the words : 
 
 "Alle menschliche Gebrechen 
 Siihnet reine Menschlichkeit." 
 
 Of the "Wahlverwandschaften," in which Goethe with 
 great vigor and moral intensity defends the institution of 
 
l62 F.MERSON AND GOfiTHE. 
 
 marriage, Emerson said that its author was the only great 
 writer "who had turned upon the moral conventions and 
 demanded by what right they claimed to control his life," 
 revealing the fact that like most contemporary readers he 
 had failed entirely to understand the moral message which 
 the novel contained. On the whole the Puritanic New 
 Englander firmly believed that the presentation of the im- 
 moral in art could have no other than an immoral effect, 
 and hence the consensus of opinion was that the book 
 was dangerous, unsound, and the work of a depraved 
 mind. They did not realize that in this masterly novel 
 Goethe was condemning the license of individual inclina- 
 tion as destructive to social-welfare and demanding moral 
 restraint and resignation on the part of the individual 
 for the sake of the larger good, that in fact he was de- 
 fending society against the dangers of unrestrained 
 individualism. 
 
 Goethe in his mature years firmly defended the basic 
 moral conventions which he deemed necessary for human 
 welfare; perhaps, no man more fully realized their social 
 significance than he himself, for he had not undergone 
 the experiences of a life-time in vain. This side of his 
 nature Emerson did not learn to appreciate. He was too 
 impatient of what to him were Goethe's glaring moral 
 delinquencies to believe that the latter too could in all sin- 
 cerity assert that man as a moral-being most fully realized 
 the divinity within him. "Alles was sich unter Menschen 
 in hoherem Sinne ereignet, musz aus dem ethischen 
 Standt-punkt betrachtet, beschaut, und beurteilt werden." 
 "Wo ich aufhoren musz, sittlich zu sein, habe ich keine 
 Gewalt mehr." (Wke. 4, p. 239). From God himself, 
 said Goethe, man derives his moral nature. "Es ist kein 
 Produkt menschlicher Reflexion, sondern es ist ange- 
 schaffene und angeborene schone Natur. Es ist mehr 
 oder weniger den Menschen im allgemeinen angeschaf fen, 
 im hohen Grade aber einzelnen ganz vorziiglich begabten 
 
the; misrepresentation of goethe. 163 
 
 Gemiitern. Diese haben durch grosze Taten oder Lehren 
 ihr gottliches Innere ofifenbart, welches sodann durch die 
 Schonheit seiner Erscheinung die I^iebe der Menschen 
 ergriff und zur Verehrung und Nacheiferung gewaltig 
 fortzog."^^ Although the mystical element, which was 
 so predominant in Emerson and the Transcendentalists, 
 asserted itself especially in the later stages of Goethe's 
 life, it was on the whole his conviction also as a realist 
 that man learned to know his divine and moral nature 
 best, not so much in mystic and isolated communion, but 
 in eager and active fulfillment of his duties as a man 
 amongst men. "Wie kann man sich selbst kennen ler- 
 nen? Durch Betrachten niemals, wohl aber durch Han- 
 deln. Versuche, deine Pflicht zu tun, und du weiszt gleich, 
 was an dir ist. Was aber ist deine Pflicht? Die Forde- 
 rung des Tages." (Wke, 4, p. 224). This last, it is true, 
 was one of the principal Goethean teachings which Car- 
 lyle especially emphasized, but it was not one that gave 
 the New Englanders particularly spiritual satisfaction. 
 To them it doubtless seemed too practical and worldly, 
 as did the Goethean conception of morality in general. 
 
 New England on the whole, we may say, then, ac- 
 cepted and gave credence to the intellectual genius and 
 immoral pagan of the Goethe Myth because it did not 
 know the real Goethe and the unity of his thought, but 
 was too prone to allow this or that fragment of his being 
 to overshadow its interpretation of his larger personality. 
 The essential difficulty was not so much one of appre- 
 ciation of ethical values as it was one of limitation of 
 scholarship and real critical abJiity. 
 
 As we know Goethe today, he looked to this world 
 and placed his trust in the senses as well as in the spirit 
 for he found them interdependent. The Transcendentalist 
 was of a mystical turn of mind and sought to live purely 
 in the Ideal or God. Goethe possessed the larger con- 
 science of the hellenist; Emerson was never free from 
 
164 KMERSOX xVND GOETHi;. 
 
 the rigor of puritanism. Emerson, the idealist, is a 
 "father of revolution," for he teaches man to obey only 
 the divine promptings within him and to stand as a non- 
 conformist or antagonist, if need be, among the institu- 
 tions of social-life. But Goethe, the realist, after the 
 stormy and impetuous titanism of his youth had become 
 spiritually clarified and purified by the richness of ar- 
 tistic and literary labors, was firmly convinced that man 
 comes to completer realization of his intrinsic moral and 
 divine nature through reverential self-resignation and 
 submission to the laws of nature and life and in so doing 
 makes of himself a viseful and thus necessary member of 
 the social-group. 
 
 "Und dein Streben sei's in Liebe, 
 Und dein Leben sei die Tat." 
 
 (Wke. 20, p. 52). 
 
 The moral-idealists of New England and Young Ger- 
 many failed to understand the significance of art and 
 aesthetic-culture in Goethe's life and philosophy. In this 
 respect we have heard them condemn him as selfish and 
 egoistic, with no large interest in life, as an apostle of 
 art and self-culture for its own sake. Their attitude to- 
 ward him was especially bitter and intolerant upon this 
 matter. Emerson once said of Germany's greatest lit- 
 erary men that art, not life, seemed to be the end of all 
 their effort (Wks. XII, p. 255) ; and in the Journals (III, 
 p. 309) he noted, rather depreciatingly, of Goethe, Car- 
 lyle, and Novalis, that they were dear lovers and stead- 
 fast maintainers of the pure ideal morality, "but they 
 worship it as the highest beauty ; their love is artistic." 
 Of Goethe in particular he once said, as we have noted: 
 "Self-cultivation is yet the moral of all Goethe has writ." 
 With his limited knowledge of Goethe and German litera- 
 ture he did not know that the crown of Goethean wisdom 
 
THE MlSREPRESItNTATION OP GOETHE. 165 
 
 was labor and love with reverence and purity of spirit, 
 and that art and aesthetic culture were only a means by 
 which the human spirit might be purged and emanci- 
 pated and elevated to the divine. 
 
 New England inherited no aesthetic tradition, and the 
 Transcendentalist lacked larger opportunity for the study 
 and appreciation of works of art. The stern puritanic 
 conscience looked with open hostility upon the art- 
 world as affording frivolous pleasure and hence as being 
 sinful and godless, and the Transcendentalist had diffi- 
 culty in overcoming this innate prejudice, laying his em- 
 phasis, as we have observed, upon the morally good and 
 useful and valuing the work of art ony in so -far as it was 
 productive of moral truth and of a religious spirit. Emer- 
 son conceived art as being complementary and "subsi- 
 diary" to nature. "It differs from the works of nature in 
 that it is not organically reproductive, but spiritually pro- 
 lific by its powerful action on the intellects of men. The 
 contemplation of a work of art draws us into a state of 
 mind, essentially religious. The great works are always 
 attuned to moral truths."*^ (Wks. VII, p. 3). 
 
 In the American colonies on the whole art had to wait 
 upon life ; there was a continent to conquer, and a frontier 
 to defend; there were homes to build, and the practical 
 necessities and wants of life demanded immediate and 
 constant attention. Moreover, the inheritance of New 
 England was a religious inheritance, and was imbued with 
 the stern, uncompromising spirit of the Calvinistic Refor- 
 mation. The Puritan was severe and stoical in temper. 
 His mind subjected itself to a constant self-searching and 
 his thoughts were always fixed upon his duty to God and 
 his own wickedness and sin. He was intolerant of all 
 frivolity and gayety and indulgence-of-self and looked 
 upon even the lesser or milder pleasures in which the 
 human spirit seeks relaxation as promptings of the devil. 
 He allowed himself few books and those were either of 
 
l66 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 a directly religious or of a morally instructive nature; 
 and the one precious literary heritage which the mother- 
 land had given to New England, the Puritan's household 
 book, was the King James Version of the Bible. 
 
 We must remember that in New England from the 
 very beginning the church had played the leading role in 
 the community ; around it spiritual interests centered, 
 and on the whole we may Say that aside from its own 
 functions it filled in New England life the place left 
 vacant by the want of aesthetic culture. The clergy 
 formed in a way a social and intellectual aristocracy. They 
 were the teachers, preachers, and emancipators of 
 thought, and to them the public conscience looked for 
 guidance in all matters of vital concern, whether public 
 or private. The Unitarian spirit was largely the out- 
 come, as we have seen, of the sifting of the philosophy 
 of the Enlightenment through the Puritanic mind, and was 
 in essence practical, utilitarian, and confined to the limits 
 of sense. The literature of this period which was read 
 in New England was formal and didactic. There was an 
 eager interest and faith in education and in all forms of 
 knowledge and learning. The criterion of book or thing 
 was, What does it teach me? What practical or moral 
 instruction does it furnish me, and how am I the better 
 for it? The rise and popularity of periodical literature 
 at this time amply illustrates this point. The purpose of 
 all this periodical literature was in the main moral or 
 philanthropic; it aimed to instruct the public, to lead in 
 educating the people, to furnish useful knowledge and be 
 of larger cultural and moral benefit. Literature and art 
 were not cherished here mainly as affording entertain- 
 ment or aesthetic enjoyment but for giving instruction in 
 the moral life and the ways of the Spirit. 
 
 We have found the Transcendental movement to have 
 been a spiritual reawakening, an attempt on the part of 
 
THE MISREPRESENTATION OE GOETHE. 167 
 
 a few thinkers and leaders to break into a larger emo- 
 tional and spiritual realm under the growing influence 
 of the European Romantic revolt, but we have also noted 
 that it was under constant restraint and conditioned by 
 the temper and tradition of New England. It was in 
 no way a poetic and literary outburst in the purest sense, 
 but rather an intellectual and spiritual rebirth, religious, 
 philosophic, and scholarly, with the preponderant em- 
 phasis placed upon wisdom and the widening of the fields 
 of knowledge and with the direct purpose of moral re- 
 finement for the development of culture and of individual 
 character. The active leaders were for the most part 
 members of the clergy, and the medium of expression 
 was not essentially literary or artistic, as poetry, the stage, 
 or the novel, but distinctly religious, as the sermon or the 
 lecture. Emerson, the poet and artist of Transcendental- 
 ism, after his resignation from the church, adopted the 
 lecture and the essay as the principal mediums of expres- 
 sion. A sympathetic appreciation of the prominence of 
 the sensuous element in the aesthetic experience was for- 
 eign to New England and looked upon with no little aver- 
 sion, and nowhere does this become more apparent than 
 in the poems and essays of Emerson himself, for although 
 they sparkle with thought, they are in the main rugged 
 and insensible to the subtler niceties of artistic form. He 
 was a true poet of New England and has remained to 
 us truly representative of its temper, which was predomi- 
 nantly spiritual and ethical and not sensuous and aesthetic. 
 The Transcendental and on the whole the American 
 critic was incapable of seeing the larger synthesis between 
 art and life. There was an inbred hostility to aesthetic 
 pleasure and to all manner of self-indulgence as being 
 idle, selfish, immoral, and in no way directly useful. 
 Spirit and sense were trained to moral restraint and re- 
 nunciation, not indulgence, and the emphasis was univer- 
 
l68 KMItRSON AND COETI-IE. 
 
 sally and naturally placed upon the practical and utili- 
 tarian arts. The artist was regarded in much the same 
 light as is the poet in Plato's Republic. The New Eng- 
 lander would not yield himself freely and unconditionally 
 to the art-work, but went to it with a conscious purpose 
 of obtaining from it some moral or intellectual benefit. 
 He was trained to resign himself to a religious, but not 
 to an aesthetic, experience; lie could not see that in the 
 final analysis both are expressions of our deepest spiritual 
 life. This has especial pertinence, as we have seen, in 
 regard to the New England criticism of Goethe. In him 
 they respected the sage and man of letters for here they 
 found instruction and food for thought, but they misun- 
 derstood and attacked the man and the artist for they 
 were incapable on the whole of appreciating the larger 
 world of art and could not understand a man who lived 
 a full and rich life, unhampered by puritanic stringency 
 and a consciousness of sin. 
 
 There is much in common between Emerson's views 
 on art and those of the Russian Tolstoi. Both consider 
 art from an ethical point-of-view, placing most value upon 
 the great works of moral teaching, and stress its re- 
 ligious origin and import. Both regard the purely aesthetic 
 as imitative and fraudulent, egoistic and unsound. Emer- • 
 son wrote : "The reference of all production at last to 
 an aboriginal Power explains the traits common to all 
 works of the highest art, — that they are universally in- 
 telligible ; that they restore to us the simplest states of 
 mind, and are religious." (Wks. II, p. 358). And Tolstoi 
 in his work, "What is Art," allies art as a means of prog- 
 ress with the religious perception of the age: "The task 
 for Christian Art is to establish brotherly union among 
 men;" and "The subject-matter of Christian art is such 
 feeling as can unite men with God and with one an- 
 other." Tolstoi satirizes mere aestheticism in most un- 
 
'['IIE MISRfirRBSENTATION OP GOETHK. 169 
 
 equivocal terms and places most serious emphasis on 
 ethical teaching and religious mysticism; Emerson re- 
 mains rooted in a religious tradition and condemns an 
 art which seems founded purely on aesthetic pleasure and 
 does not direct us consciously to ethical values. We there- 
 fore find both Tolstoi and Emerson arrayed against 
 Goethe the artist. 
 
 "But the artist and the connoisseur," said Emerson, 
 "now seek in art the exhibition of their talent, or an 
 asylum from the evils of life. Men are not well pleased 
 with the figure they make in their imaginations, and they 
 flee to art, and convey their better sense in an oratorio, 
 a statue, or a picture. Art makes the same effort which 
 a sensual prosperity makes; namely to detach the beau- 
 tiful from the useful, to do up the work as unavoidable, 
 and, hating it, pass on to enjoyment. The solaces and 
 compensations, this division of beauty from use, the laws 
 of nature do not permit. As soon as beauty is sought, 
 not from religion and love but for pleasure, it degrades 
 the seeker. High beauty is no longer attainable by him 
 in canvas or in stone, in sound or in lyrical construction ; 
 an effeminate, prudent, sickly beauty, which is not beauty, 
 is all that can be formed ; for the hand can never execute 
 anything higher than the character can inspire." (Wks. 
 II, p. 336). In men like Emerson and the New Eng- 
 landers it was the poverty of the aesthetic conscience that 
 made it so hard for them to attain to any unreserved ap- 
 preciation of the larger art-world of Shakespeare or 
 Goethe. True to their own instinct they looked always 
 for the teacher or the preacher, or the moralist in the 
 work of art. They were self-conscious and felt them- 
 selves restricted in the art-world, and much of their preju- 
 dice was thus due to blindness, intolerance, and limited 
 scholarship. They could' not understand a nature which 
 was naive and self-indulgent, which was capable of sur- 
 
lyo EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 rendering itself freely and unconsciously to sensuous and 
 aesthetic pleasure with never a thought for any imme- 
 diate good or benefit, which could be wise and moral and 
 at the tame time unconcernedly indulgent of self. For 
 such a one was Goethe, a child of nature and of hellenic 
 culture as embodied in the pure teachings of the Renais- 
 sance. This seemingly irreconcilable dual nature which 
 they foimd in Goethe, they could not comprehend. How 
 could a man of such profound wisdom be at the same 
 time a selfish egoist, an immoral pagan, and a maker of 
 "paste-jewels?" Emerson was not a scholar, and he was 
 indifferent to the subtler beauties of aesthetic form ; hence 
 we find him inappreciative of Goethe the artist, terming 
 him when especially embittered an apostle of self-culture 
 and an inferior artist whose aim was pleasure and enjoy- 
 ment and love of ease. And thus we are better prepared 
 to understand why he was led to call modern art as 
 exemplified in Goethe's works egoistic, "artistic," and sel- 
 fish, and why he venerated in Goethe in particular the 
 writer and man of wisdom. 
 
 We have mentioned Schiller as a moral-idealist who 
 in his approach to the genius of Goethe and also of 
 Shakespeare encountered many of the same difficulties 
 with which Emerson had to contend, but was able to meet 
 and surmount them and live during the last years of his 
 life in a relation of spiritual companionship with and 
 almost brotherhood to Goethe. Schiller spent his life in 
 an environment where the aesthetic tradition was an in- 
 heritance. He was born a dramatist leather than a preach- 
 er although we are told that as a boy he showed con- 
 siderable promise of a possible future career in the latter 
 field of activity. The medium of thought-expression 
 which he found ready and most -suitable to his nature was 
 that of the drama and not as with Emerson that of the 
 
THB MISREPRESENTATION OE GOETHE. 171 
 
 pulpit and platform. Thus his whole life was spent in 
 aesthetic labors, whether as a philosopher or creator, and 
 in this respect there was open to him an avenue by means 
 of which he could approach to a sympathetic understand- 
 ing of the Goethean genius. 
 
 As a philosopher Schiller's aim was to find the func- 
 tion of art in life. He was a clear and manly thinker, 
 and his philosophy is one of practical application to hu- 
 man-welfare and development. He starts out from Kant 
 and seeks to bring into harmony the Kantian conception 
 of inclination and duty which are to him opposite and 
 irreconcilable poles. His goal is the moral-perfection of 
 mankind, and he finds this realized in what he terms the 
 beautiful-soul or completed-man, in whom all strife be- 
 tween the eternal Moral-law and individual desire has 
 ceased and in whom inclination becomes one with duty. 
 To him art and aesthetic-culture present the one import- 
 ant process by which this end is to be attained ; they fur- 
 nish a means to the moral-perfection of man; 
 
 "Die Kunst, O Mensch, hast du allein. 
 
 Nur durch das Morgenthor des Schonen 
 Drangst du in der Erkenntnis Land, 
 An hohern Glanz sich zu gewohnen, 
 Ubt sich am Reize der Verstand. 
 Was bei dem Saitenklang der Musen 
 Mit siiszem Beben dich durchdrang, 
 Erzog die Kraft in deinem Busen, 
 Die sich dereinst zum Weltgeist schwang." 
 
 Schiller and Goethe agree fundamentally in their ideas of 
 the place of art in life. Schiller arrived at his conclu- 
 sions by the processes of reasoning, whereas Goethe re- 
 lied largely upon his experience and intuition, although 
 
172 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 he was by no means indifferent to aesthetic speculations, 
 as we find aptly evidenced in his correspondence with the 
 younger poet. Goethe accepted in the large the results 
 of Schiller's speculations as embodied in the "Aesthetic 
 Letters'' and the "Naive and Sentimental Poetry,'' and 
 
 he wrote to Schiller, — Oct. 26, '94, — " so waren 
 
 mir diese Briefe angenehm und wohltatig, und, wie sollte 
 es anders sein, da ich, was ich fiir Recht seit langer Zeit 
 erkannte, was ich teils lebte, teils zu leben wiinschte, auf 
 eine so zusammenhangende und edle Weise vorgetragen 
 fand !" Years later, after Schiller's death, Goethe paid 
 a beautiful tribute to the nobility of his friend's char- 
 acter and their mutual conviction of the purifying and 
 spiritualizing power of the aesthetic experience in his 
 "Epilog zu Schiller's Glocke" :— 
 
 "Denn er war unser ! Mag das stolze Wort 
 Den lauten Schmerz gewaltig ubertonen ! 
 Er mochte sich bei uns, im sichern Port, 
 Nach wildern Sturm zum Dauernden gewohnen. 
 Indessen schritt sein Geist gewaltig fort 
 Ins Ewige des Wahren, Guten, Schonen, 
 Und hinter ihm, in wesenlosem Scheine, 
 Lag, was uns alle bandigt, das Gemeine." 
 
 (Wke. I, p. 283). 
 
 Emerson too, we remember, calls for the complete 
 man, the larger personality, but he does not tell us defi- 
 nitely how he is to be produced. With the true instinct 
 of the mystic, he advises us to yield to divine intuitions 
 and thus grow in the power of the soul; but the whole 
 conception is vague and he gives us no practical sugges- 
 tions of the process by which such an end is to be at- 
 tained. Governments, he says, have their origin in the 
 moral identity of men, and it is their aim to produce the 
 
THE MISREPRESENTATION OE GOETHE. 1 73 
 
 man of character and to educate the wise man. "The 
 highest end of government is the culture of men." (Wks. 
 Ill, p. 204). He realizes that the moral character of the 
 individual citizen is fundamental to ahy betterment in 
 the character of government; "The state must follow, 
 and not lead the character and progress of the citizen." — 
 "The appearance of character makes the state unneces- 
 sary. The wise man is the state." So too Schiller tells 
 us: "Alle Verbesserung im Politischen soil von Vered- 
 lung des Charakters ausgehen." Both men^° agree as 
 to the end to be attained which is moral character by 
 means of education and culture, but they are the children 
 of their respective thought-environments in their ideas 
 concerning the nature of culture and the production of 
 character. Emerson in accord with the religious tradition 
 of New England teaches that the source of all true cul- 
 ture and character lies in absolute reliance upon the 
 Moral-sentiment and resignation to the will of God. 
 Thereby it is that the latent powers of the soul are called 
 into being. Schiller the thinker and Goethe the poet teach 
 us that it is the function of art and of aesthetic culture to 
 produce the harmonious being and the man of character 
 and thus to serve as a means to the regeneration of the 
 social state. Wherein Emerson is vague, mystical, in- 
 definite, and transcendental, Schiller and Goethe are es- 
 sentially tangible and practical in doctrine. They pre- 
 sent in turn a distinctly ethical advance upon the cultural 
 ideals of Shaftesbury and also of the German Romanti- 
 cists, and give a more definite solution than Emerson's 
 reliance upon complete abandonment and devotion to the 
 Spirit, which is an expression of the mystical nature of 
 his transcendental philosophy. In Schiller and Goethe 
 we approach the highest moral values of life from the 
 point of view of art ; in Emerson we are always led back 
 finally to an essentially religious experience. 
 
174 EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 Goethe ably expresses his conviction in the moral 
 worth and benefit of art in his lines (Wke. 9, p. 297) : — 
 
 "Denn das ist der Kunst Bestreben, 
 Jeden aus sich selbst zu heben, 
 Ihn dern Boden zu entftihren; 
 Link und Recht musz er verlieren 
 Ohne zauderndes Entsagen; 
 Aufwarts fiihlt er sich getragen ! 
 
 ^ ^ ^ ^ T^i i|c 3^':(; :(: 
 
 Wer empfing der mochte geben. 
 In der Himmelsluft der Musen 
 Offnet Busen sich dem Busen, 
 Freund begegnet neuem Freunde, 
 Schlieszen sich zur All-Gemeinde, 
 Dort versohnt sich Feind dem Feinde. 
 
 Die Kunst versohnt der Sitten Widerstreit, 
 
 In ihren Kreisen waltet Einigkeit. 
 
 Was auch sich sucht und flieht, sich liebt und haszt, 
 
 Bins wird vom andern schicklich angefaszt " 
 
 Social-service is the practical aim, then, of self-cul- 
 ture in the Goethean sense, and in this regard Emerson 
 and the majority of the New England critics sadly mis- 
 understood its concrete application in the "Faust" and 
 the "Meister." Traditional and environmental restric- 
 tions prevented them from appreciating the fact that ac- 
 cording to Goethe art was a means by which mankind 
 could approach, to highest spiritual attainment. Few of 
 them understood the real significance of the "Wander- 
 jahre" and the Faust-drama as a whole, and knew the 
 real Goethe. Novalis had criticised the "Meister," as we 
 have noted, for he found that it made art and culture 
 subsidiary to the service of humanity; but the Romanti- 
 cists glorified art, and of the "Meister" knew only the 
 "Lehrjahre," where self -culture is emphasized. The 
 "Wander jahre" and the Second Part of "Faust" which 
 contain the conclusions of the Goethean thought had not 
 
THE MISREPEUSENTATION OF GOETHU. 1 75 
 
 as yet appeared. Hence they were largely ignorant of 
 the importance of this greater ideal in Goethe's philosophy 
 and stressed his teaching of self-culture as the basis for 
 their view of life. Accepting in the main their interpre- 
 tation, the social and moral idealists of "Young Germany" 
 were able to see in Goethe only the aesthete and egoist, 
 cold, proud, selfish, and self-sufficient. And as the New 
 Englanders, though in close touch philosophically with the 
 Romantic Renaissance, had no aesthetic tradition to open 
 up to them any adequate conception of the true place of 
 art in life, they judged Goethe on the one hand as the 
 supreme Artist, whose main purpose in life was self- 
 culture, for so the Romanticists had hailed him. On the 
 other hand like "Young Germany" they denounced him 
 as immoral, egoistic, a man of talent but not genius, "ar- 
 tistic but not artist," because they failed to find a higher 
 purpose in his thought and labor at all compatible with 
 their own unrelenting puritanic conscience. 
 
 In the American criticism of Goethe there was a line 
 of division constantly drawn between Goethe's mind and 
 his moral worth. Emerson and others appreciated and 
 derived much comfort from the sage and scholar, the man 
 of intellect and wisdom, but they had only words of cen- 
 sure for the apostle of aesthetic culture. They saw only 
 one side at a time and could not connect the two, for they 
 did not see the synthesis between aesthetic-culture and 
 life in the Goethean philosophy, and did not realize that 
 only by continually enriching his own mind and person- 
 ality, was the poet at all able to assimilate and become 
 master of the wide culture and wisdom, which they ap- 
 plauded and prized. They failed to note that with Goethe 
 self-culture was a means to wisdom and purer being, and 
 that these latter were in turn valid only when put to some 
 larger humanitarian and altruistic purpose. For this is 
 the message which Goethe brings us in his great works, 
 
176 EMERSON AND GOETI-IE. 
 
 in the "Wanderjahre" more particularly and the Second 
 Part of "Faust," but nowhere does it receive better illus- 
 tration than in the life of the poet himself. It is the 
 function of the Helena-act of the "Faust" — which the 
 New England critics were on the whole able to treat only 
 as an independent piece — to introduce Faust into the 
 realm of purest beauty and subject him to the ennobling 
 influences of aesthetic culture, that he may thereby be 
 spiritually chastened and instilled with the virtue of high- 
 est moral endeavor. Nothing more plainly illustrates 
 this than the words of Phorkyas, counselling Faust to 
 hold firmly to the garments and veil of Helena, as her 
 physical form vanishes from his embrace : — 
 
 "Halte fest, was dir von allem iibrig blieb. 
 
 Die Gottin ist's nicht mehr, die du verlorst, 
 Doch gottlich ist's. Bediene dich der hohen, 
 Unschatzbar'n Gunst und hebe dich empor: 
 Es tragi dich tiber alles Gemeine rasch 
 Am Ather hin, so lange du dauern kannst." 
 
 (Faust— 9945). 
 
 Enveloped by the garments of Helena, Faust is sym- 
 bolically borne aloft to higher purposes, and when we 
 next meet him he is filled with new strength and courage 
 and a desire to act and be of service in the world. To 
 him now, "Genieszen macht gemein," as he says, and he 
 turns to useful, altruistic action. 
 
 "Mit nichten! dieser Erdenkreis 
 Gewahrt noch Raum zu groszen Taten; 
 Erstaunenswiirdiges soil geraten, 
 Ich fiihle Kraft zu kiihnem Fleisz." (1081.) 
 
 And just as Helena had brought new life to Faust 
 and left him ennobled, so the Italian Journey (1786-1788) 
 marks an epoch in Goethe's career. During the years 
 after his return to Weimar he became in a sense a new 
 
THE MISREPRESENTATION OF GOETHE. 1 77 
 
 being, clarified and purified in spirit and conscious of the 
 responsibilities and higher aims which were given him in 
 life. Now he was able to accommodate himself har- 
 moniously and freely and without constraint to his duties 
 as a useful and active member of society. Henceforth 
 this becomes the gist of his message to humanity, and he 
 clearly expressed this new feeling of obligation in his 
 words to Riemer (May 19, 1809) : — "Indessen mache ich 
 Ihnen zur Pflicht and Selbstbeherrschung, ja an Selbst- 
 standigkeit zu denken und sich nach einem Amte umzu- 
 sehen, deren manche Sie mit Ehren bekleiden konnten 
 und geschahe es nur um die Uberzeugung bei Sich zu 
 nahren: dasz in jeder Lage des L,ebens cine bestimmte 
 Thatigkeit von uns gefordert wird und dasz wir nur in 
 sofern fiir etwas gelten als wir den Bedurfnissen anderer 
 auf eine regelmaszige und zuverlassige Weise entgegen- 
 kommen." 
 
 Now too, Goethe became convinced of the responsi- 
 bility and sacredness of his mission as a poet. For him, 
 as for Faust, the new watchword -was : "Die Tat ist alles, 
 nichts der Rubra;" and with keen sensibility of his duty 
 both to himself and to his fellow-men he answers the 
 Muse of poetry in the "Zueignung" with the words : — 
 
 "Ein froher Wille lebt in tneinem Blut, 
 Ich kenne ganz den Wert von deinen Gaben. 
 Fiir andre wachst in mir das edle Gut, 
 Ich kann und will das Pfund nicht mehr vergraben ! 
 Warum such ich den Weg so sehnsuchtsvoll, 
 Wenn ich ihn nicht den Briidern zeigen soil?" 
 
 (Wke. I, p. s). 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 We have found Emerson's admiration for Goethe to 
 have been indeed genuine in so far as it went, though we 
 must always remember that it was, as he himself said, "a 
 qualified admiration." It reflects excellently the spii'it 
 of the contemporary American opinion, and it has exerted 
 great influence in general upon the American mind. 
 
 What the American esteemed most in Goethe was the 
 many-sidedness of the man's genius, his love of truth, his 
 industry and brilliant achievement, his mastery in the 
 many fields of knowledge which distinguished his age, 
 his poetic ability, and the artistic insight which enabled 
 him better than any contemporary to read the old riddle 
 of nature for the modern age. It was the scholar, the 
 writer, and the philosopher, to whom the student in them 
 paid respect and homage. With Carlyle they marvelled 
 at his rich culture and universality of mind ; but they were 
 repelled by what they conceived to be his immoral char- 
 acter and devotion to self-culture for its own sake ; from 
 the artist and selfish egoist, as they termed him, from 
 him of the Olympian complacency, of the "velvet-life" 
 and courtly ease, the puritan and the democrat in them 
 turned in disdain. They did not know the true Goethe; 
 they were influenced by the Romantic and "Young Ger- 
 man" misrepresentations, and in turn themselves enlarged 
 upon the Goethe Myth. They looked for the priest and 
 found only the poet, for they had no aesthetic tradition 
 and training by which to approach him more sympatheti- 
 cally and thus find in him what they desired above all 
 
CONCLUSION. 179 
 
 things — the poet-priest. Genius of moral character was 
 to the New Englander true greatness, and applying this 
 standard to Goethe in a false light and unfriendly spirit, 
 they misjudged him and found him wanting. "He might 
 have been a priest," said Margaret Fuller, "he is only a 
 sage." To Theodore Parker he was "an Artist, not a 
 Man," and so too, Alcott records: "Ah! could he but 
 have found himself in the One, whom, with such sur- 
 passing skill he individualized, but failed to impersonate. 
 His aloofness from life, his residence in the Many, his 
 inability to identify himself with the whole of things — ■ 
 this duplicity of genius denied him free admittance to 
 unity. Cunning he was, not wise in the simplicity of wis- 
 dom." They regarded him as the great example of self- 
 culture, and therein they found him a great "Pagan," one 
 who through his own inclination had cut himself off from 
 the highest attainment of Christian character. All the 
 American criticism, with one or two exceptions, was of 
 such tenor, and Emerson's, as we have seen, was a voice 
 raised to pronounce judgment in the same lofty spirit 
 and from a like turn-of-mind. 
 
 In Emerson we have a splendid type of the moral- 
 idealist, and we find his attitude toward Goethe typical 
 of the idealistic mind. Emerson was primarily a moral- 
 teacher and friend of those who would dwell in the world 
 of the Spirit, a spiritual-emancipator, but himself the 
 most reserved of men. In his speculative interests he 
 stands related to the Romantic revolt, but he differs from 
 it as the philosophy of New England Transcendentalism 
 differed from that of German Romanticism. Like Goethe 
 he exercised a control over himself and remained a man 
 among men, with an eye to the practical and the useful, 
 though never in a sordid sense. The Romantic-idealist 
 was largely a visionary and a dreamer; his activity was 
 short and scattered, though brilliant and on the whole of 
 inestimable value. Emerson found the practical in the 
 
l8o EMERSON AND GOETHE. 
 
 Ideal and taught its ethical values, self-control and self- 
 resignation in the ways of the Spirit. Goethe remained 
 always the master of his thought and intuition, sane, sen- 
 sible, balanced, "a healthy mind," conservative, steeling 
 his turbulent nature in resignation to the ways of life, 
 and seeking to fit himself into his proper place in the 
 social-order. Goethe's effort is primarily that of the 
 artist to accommodate himself to the world; Emerson's 
 is that of the preacher and man-of-religion. 
 
 In this regard one can not well isolate Emerson's crit- 
 ical opinions, for although fundamentally they were the 
 views of one distinct and original mind they were in a 
 larger aspect expressive of the temper of New England, 
 or better, of American idealism. During those years 
 when he was deeply engaged in the reading of German 
 books and of Goethe, he was also in constant touch with 
 other students; he was under the inspiring influence of 
 Carlyle, whose enthusiasm for Goethe was contagious ; 
 and' he was a reader of the best in the contemporary peri- 
 odical literature. Bancroft, Follen, Longfellow, Parker, 
 Alcott, to mention only a few, thought that they judged 
 Goethe with full justice from an idealistic point-of-view, 
 whereas in reality their knowledge was based upon a very 
 limited and distorted and oftentimes highly and uncon- 
 sciously prejudiced estimate of the poet. It is little won- 
 der then that in Emerson we find reflected rtluch of their 
 praise and censure. 
 
 If we were to ask, in what respect Emerson's criti- 
 cism of Goethe differed from that of his contemporaries, 
 we should say that it differed as the individual Emerson 
 differed from them. It had a calm and even tone and in 
 its public utterances was never lacking in dignity. It 
 was always that of a thoughtful and careful mind, test- 
 ing its object by highest aim and measure. It always 
 aimed at fundamentals and never satisfied itself with 
 superficialities and platitudes. On the whole it tried to 
 
CONCI.USION. l8l 
 
 be just, and it always has the ring of sincerity and truth. 
 It was more distinctly intellectual and lacked the warmth 
 and sympathy of that of Margaret Fuller, the vehemence 
 and virility of Theodore Parker, and the aesthetic appre- 
 ciation of Bancroft and Hedge and Calvert, as it lacked 
 the vigorous enthusiasm of Carlyle and the merciless 
 sting of the Calvinistic reactionaries. It was primarily 
 an appreciation of the "wisdom" of Goethe, and was in- 
 different to the aesthetic beauty and artistic quality of the 
 poetic works and missed their intrinsic moral message. 
 Perhaps nothing is better illustrative of what Emerson 
 appreciated and failed to appreciate in Goethe than the 
 words on the "Meister" in the Essay in "Representative 
 men" (Wks. IV, p. 278), where he speaks of its delicious 
 sweetness, its many and solid thoughts and just insights 
 into life and manners and characters, its good hints for 
 the conduct of life and unexpected glimpses into a higher 
 sphere, and then almost in the same breath reveals that 
 he was oblivious to the moral and social significance of 
 the work by characterizing its conclusion as lame and im- 
 moral. Emerson valued Goethe's sincerity and truth as 
 a genius, his self-reliance and sterling individuality, but 
 in the works he looked for the spiritual and not the sen- 
 suous thrill. Following Carlyle he sought an historical 
 perspective and placed Goethe beside Napoleon as one 
 of the two greatest men of the age, thus enabling Her- 
 mann Grimm at a later date to write : "Although I grew 
 up in the study of Goethe, and had had such intercourse 
 with those who have known him personally, I am in- 
 debted to Emerson for the historical view of Goethe, 
 which taught me to regard him as the great phenomenon 
 in the universal development of mankind."'^ 
 
 In our examination of Emerson's critical opinion of 
 Goethe we have found that from the point-of-view of 
 individual character it was distinctly that of the moral 
 idealist and ethical teacher passing judgment upon the 
 
1 82 emb;rson and goethe. 
 
 realist and artist. From the point-of-view of the histor- 
 ical environment it reflected the American sentiment on 
 the whole and the attitude of the New England Trans- 
 cendentalists in particular. Philosophically it was akin 
 to the critical views of the German Romanticists and ethi- 
 cally and from a practical standpoint it had considerable 
 in common with the criticism of "Young Germany." It 
 was an understanding and justification of only one phase 
 of Goethe's genius, and its limitations lay in the nature of 
 its own restricted and unyielding temper and in the ag- 
 gressive anti-Goethe sentiment which prevailed in the 
 community and was not confined to New England. 
 
 But when we stop to consider the meagreness of the 
 material which the Transcendental and American critics 
 possessed in their pursuance of the study of Goethe and 
 the many difiiculties, linguistic and other, which they had 
 to overcome, we are astonished at the intelligence of their 
 judgment. Some of their statements are still superior to 
 any later criticism of Goethe from an American hand, as 
 for instance, those of Emerson himself, of Mai'garet 
 Fuller, of Hedge, Calvert, George Bancroft's first article 
 in 1824, and the article in the New York Review of 1839 ; 
 and what they said of him was indeed equal, if not su- 
 perior, to any contemporary continental statement. We 
 must remember that their study ceased long before the 
 opening of the Goethe-archives and the foundation of 
 systematic and scientific Goethe-scholarship, which have 
 done so much to bring about a better understanding of 
 the great poet and man. The influence of their criticism, 
 in particular that of Emerson, is still felt in America to- 
 day, because, perhaps, it is so truly American and so well 
 reflects the American critical temper. For the seeds which 
 Emerson sowed have taken firm root in our American 
 soil, and it is to him that we turn for the expression of 
 that moral-idealism which has ever been a characteristic 
 of the American mind. 
 
I.— NOTES. 
 CHAPTER I. Phases of the Romantic Revolt. 
 
 General Works: O. B. Frothing-ham, "Transcendentalism in 
 New England"-; H. C. Goddard, "Studies in New England Tran- 
 scendentalism"; Memorial History of Boston (IV., p. 295-330); 
 Emerson, "The Transcendentalist" (Wks. I.) ; and "Historic 
 Notes of Life in New England" (Wks., vol. X.) ; J. F. Clarke, 
 "Nineteenth Century Questions" ; etc. 
 
 ^(p. 19). See J. F. Clarke, "Nineteenth Century Questions" 
 (Emerson), p. 272-73; and also 'Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, 
 2nd series, vol. 2, p. no. 
 
 °(p. 22). See 0. B. Frothingham, "George Ripley," American 
 Men of Letters Series, p. 20. 
 
 "(p. 22). See John W. Chadwick, "W. E. Channing," p. 351. 
 
 *(p. 23). 'See H. C. Goddard, "Studies in New England 
 Transcendentalism," p. 58. 
 
 °(p. 24). See J. F. Clarke, "Autobiography," p. 38-39. 
 
 °(P- 25). See J. F. Clarke, "Nineteenth Century Questions," 
 p. 166. Contrasting Carlyle and Emerson (see Mass. Hist. Soc. 
 Proceedings, 2nd series, vol. 2, p. 159), Clarke writes: "Neither 
 could found a school of thought, but each was an inspiration to 
 his time. Each was a prophet; but Carlyle was a prophet like 
 John the Baptist, a Voice crying in the Wilderness. Emerson 
 was a prophet of light and love overcoming evil with good, dis- 
 pelling darkness with light, and always comforting our souls by 
 announcing that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand." 
 
 '(P- 25). "Carlyle's %ife of Schiller' opened the portals of 
 German literature and made an epoch in biography and criticism. 
 
 He wrote of Goethe, Schiller, Richter, Burns, Novalis, even 
 
 Voltaire, with reverence for the divine element in each." 
 
 (J. F. Clarke, "Nineteenth Century Questions," p. 166-176.) 
 
 '(p. 28). Perhaps no one has given a better statement of 
 the characteristics and purposes of the Transcendental Movement 
 than W. H. Channing in his portion of the M. Fuller Memoirs 
 (vol. II., p. 12 fif) : "Transcendentalism was an assertion of the 
 inalienable integrity of man, of the immanence of Divinity in 
 instinct. In part, it was a reaction against Puritan Orthodoxy; 
 in part, an efifect of renewed study of the ancients, of Plato and 
 the Alexandrians, of Plutarch's Morals, Seneca, and Epictetus ; 
 in part, the natural product of the culture of the place and time. 
 
1 84 APPENDIX. 
 
 On the somewhat stunted stock of Unitarianism — whose charac- 
 teristic dogma was trust in individual reason as correlative to 
 Supreme Wisdom — 'had been grafted German Idealism, as taught 
 by masters of most various schools — by Kant and Jacobi, Fichte 
 and Novalis, Schelling and Hegcl, Schleiermacher and DeWette, 
 by Mme. de Stael, Cousin, Coleridge, and Carlyle; and the result 
 was a vague yet exalting conception of the godlike nature of the 
 human spirit. Transcendentalism, as viewed by its disciples, was 
 a pilgrimage from the idolatrous world of creeds and rituals to 
 the temple of the Living God in the Soul Amidst material- 
 ists, zealots, and sceptics, the Transcendentalist believed in per- 
 petual inspiration, the miraculous power of the 'will, and a birth- 
 
 rig'ht to universal good His maxims were: 'Trust, dare and 
 
 be; infinite good is ready for your asking; seek and find.. All 
 that yotir fellows can claim or need is that you should 'become, 
 in fact, your highest self; fulfil, then, your ideal.'" 
 
 GoBTHU AND THE Romanticists. 
 
 In general, see books of Walzel, Boucke, Siebeck, Harnack, 
 Haym, Meyer, and Bielschowsky, as listed in the bibliography. 
 
 "(p. 36). See Novalis Wrke., Bong and Co. (Deutsches 
 Verlags'haus, Berlin), Fragmente 1354 and ia86. 
 
 In the words, "Kiinstlerischer Atheismus," Novalis well 
 characterizes the "iMeister" from the romantic ipoint-of-view, 
 for the Romanticists were devotees of art and culture for their 
 own sake, whereas Goethe looked to the larger goal of human 
 and social welfare. They were acquainted with and glorified 
 the Xehrjaihre" (1797) and "Faust I." (1808) ; the "Wander- 
 jahre" (1821) and "Faust II." (1832), where the synthesis of the 
 Goethean philosophy of life is given, appeared after their impor- 
 tant activities had ceased. 
 
 CHAPTER 11. GoETHB in New England. 
 
 In general: Goethe Jahr Buch V., 219 ff; article on Goethe 
 in America by H. S. White; S. 'H. Goodnight, Wisconsin Publi- 
 cations, vol. 4, "German Literature in American 'Magazines Prior 
 to 1846"; and H. C. Goddard, "New England Transcendentalism." 
 
 "(p. 38). See 'Goodnight, p. 34. 
 
 "(p. 39). See Goodnight, p. 22-26. 
 
 '^(p. 39)- See Goodnight, p. 29. 
 
 "(p. 42). See Goethe Jahr Buch, vol. 25, p. 3 f., "Brief- 
 wechsel zwischen Goethe und Amerikanern." 
 
APPENDIX. 185 
 
 "(P- 43)- The influence of the statements of Menzel, Follen, 
 and Ware is now plainly perceptible. 
 
 '°(p. 44). See Goethe Jahr Buch V., p. 219 ff. 
 
 "(p. 44). See Follen's Works (Hilliard, Gray and Com- 
 pany, Boston, 1842, s volumes). Vol. 4, p. 382-387. 
 
 "(p. 45). Carlyle's principal essays on German literary sub- 
 jects and translations from the German appeared in the follow- 
 ing order. 
 
 (i) "Life of Schiller" ('London Mag., 1823-24), 1825, 1845. 
 
 (2) "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship," 1824. 
 
 (3) "Jean Paul" (Edinburgh Review), 1827. 
 
 (4) "German Literature" (Edinburgh Review), 1827. 
 
 (5) Goethe's Helena (Foreign Review), 1828. 
 . (6) Goethe (Foreign Review), 1828. 
 
 (7), German Playwrights (Foreign Review), 1829. 
 (8) Voltaire (Foreign Review), 1829. 
 (g) Novalis (Foreign Review), 1829. 
 
 (10) Signs of the Times (Edinburgh Review), 1829. 
 
 (11) Richter (Foreign Review), 1830. 
 (12") Schiller (Fraser's Mag.), 1831. 
 
 (13) Characteristics (Edinburgh Review), 1831. 
 
 (14) Goethe's Portrait (Fraser's Mag.), 1832. 
 
 (15) Death of Goethe (New Monthly Mag.), 1832. 
 
 (16) 'Goethe's Works (Foreign Quarterly Review), 1832. 
 
 (17) "Novelle," transl. from Goethe (Fraser's Mag.), 1832. 
 
 (18) "The Tale," by Goethe (Fraser's iMag.), 1832. 
 
 (19) "Sartor Resartus," 1833-34 (Fraser's Mag.), 1835 
 (Boston). 
 
 (20) "Heroes and Hero Worship," 1841. 
 
 "(p. 463. See Carlyle, "Heroes and Hero Worship." Lect. 
 
 S, "Hero as Man of Letters." 
 
 "(p. 46). Carlyle, Essay, "'Goethe." 
 
 ""(p. 47). Carlyle, Essay, "Goefihe's Works." 
 
 ''(p. 47)- Carlyle, 'Essay, 'IDeath of Goethe." 
 
 "'(p. 47). Carlyle, Essay, "Goethe's Portrait." 
 
 '^(p. 47). See Wordsworth's pro'se works, vol. HL, p. 436 ff. 
 
 Also A. Brandl's "S. T. Coleridge and the English Romantic 
 
 School," p. 305. 
 
 °*(p. 48). See J. F. Clarke, "Nineteenth 'Century Questions," 
 
 essay on "The Two Carlyles." 
 
 ''^(p. 48). See Emerson^Carlyle Correspondence, L; Letter 
 
 of Etnerson to Carlyle, May 14, 1834. 
 
 The warm reception which was accorded Carlyle's writings 
 
 in New England is s'hown by the fact that this was the first edi- 
 
l86 APPENDIX. 
 
 tion of the ''Sartor" published either in England or America. 
 Emerson in his first letter to Carlyle wrote (1834) : "Like Some- 
 body in 'Wilhelm Meister,' I said : This person has come under 
 
 obligations to me and to all whom he has enlightened You 
 
 are dispensing that w^hich is rarest, namely, the simplest truths 
 
 which lie next to consciousness, and which only the Platos 
 
 and Goethes peruse." 
 
 '"(p. 48). See Emerson-Carlyle Corresipondence, I., p. 183. 
 See also Carlyle's reply, I., p. 189. 
 
 "'(p. 49). Emerson-'Carlyle Correspondence, I., 231. 
 
 '^(p. 50). For the attitude of Menzel and Young Germany 
 on the whole, see: iG. Brandes, "Main Currents in Nineteenth 
 Century 'Literattire" (vol. 6, "Young Germany") ; J. Prolss, "Das 
 Junge Deutschland" (Stuttgart, Cotta, 1892) ; von Noe, "Goethe 
 und das Junge Deutschland" (Chicago, 1910) ; R. M. M'eyer, 
 "Wolfgang Menzel" (Die Nation, XV., p. 546 f. and 562 f.) ; 
 R. M. Meyer, "Deutsche Literatur des 19 Jahrhunderts," I., p. 59. 
 
 For characteristic statements, see Gutzkow's essay, "Uber 
 Goethe im Wendepunkte Zweier Jahrhunderte," 1835 ; and 
 Heine's various polemical articles, as those against Menzel, also 
 the first book of the "Romantische Schule." It is interesting to 
 note that in 1836 G. W. Haven's translation from Heine, "Letters 
 auxiliary to the History of Modern Polite Literature in Ger- 
 many" (J. Monroe & Co.), appeared, and doubtless made Heine's 
 attitude toward Goethe known to some extent at least in Amer- 
 ica, The work was reviewed in the periodicals — see North Amer- 
 ican Review, XLHL, 1836. 
 
 '°(p. 54). See Goodnight, p. 74 f. 
 
 '"(p. 56). Ware's article is a review of Dwight's book of 
 translations from the lyrics of Goethe and 'Schiller, and aippeared 
 in George Ripley's series (vol. 3) ; the criticism is a glorification 
 of Schiller at Goethe's expense. 
 
 ''(p. 57). See Thomas W. Higginson, "Henry W. Long- 
 fellow," p. 127 (American Men of Letters). 
 
 ^^(p. 58). See Chadwick's biography of Ohanning (Hougih- 
 ton-tMifflin Co., 1903), p. 207 and p. 371. 
 
 "(p. 58). See O. W. Holmes, "Emerson,'' p. 79. 
 
 ''*(p. 58). For complete statement of Margaret Fuller's re- 
 lation to Goethe, see the work of F. A. Braun, "Margaret Fuller 
 and Goethe" (Henry Holt & Co., N. Y., 1910). Also her two 
 articles which originally appeared in the Dial, but have been re- 
 issued in her book, "Life Within and Life Without." (i) "Men- 
 zel's View of Goethe"; and (2) "Essay on Goethe" (1841). Of 
 the latter F. H. Hedge said: "So far as it goes, it is one of the 
 
APPENDIX. 187 
 
 best criticisms extant on "Goethe." (See M. Fuller's Memoirs; 
 I. p. 96; N. Y. Tribune Association, 1869; 2 vol.) 
 
 Emerson said of her that Goethe nowhere found a braver, 
 more intelligent, and more sympathetic reader. "The religion, 
 the science, the Catholicism, the worship of art, the mysticism 
 and daemonology, and withal the clear recognition of moral dis- 
 tinctions as final and eternal, all charmed her." (Memoirs: I., 
 p. 243.) "Margaret was one of the few persons who looked upon 
 life as an art, and every person not merely as an artist but as a 
 work of art." (Memoirs; II., p. 238.) Herein, perhaps, lies 
 the secret of her sympathetic and intelligent appreciation of 
 Goethe's genius. 
 
 ^°(p. 60). For Parker's attitude, see: J. Weiss,. "Life and 
 Correspondence of Theodore Parker" (D. Appleton & Co., N. Y.), 
 1864, 2 vol. ; Vol. II., p. 20 ff. O. B. Frothingham., "Life of Theo. 
 Parker" (Houghton, Osgood & Co.), 1879, p. 108-109. 
 
 Emerson's beautiful tribute to Parker (Wks., X., p. 344) 
 throws considerable light upon his personality and 'hence enables 
 us to better appreciate his critical attitude toward Goethe. "Theo- 
 dore Parker was our Savonarola, an excellent scholar, in frank 
 and affectionate communication with the best minds of his day, 
 yet the tribune oi the people, and the stout Reformer to urge 
 and defend every cause of humanity with and for the humblest 
 of mankind. He was no artist. Highly refined persons might 
 easily miss in him the element of beauty. What he said was 
 mere fact, almost offended you, so bald and detached ; little 
 cared he. He stood altogether for practical truth ; and so to 
 the last. He used every day and hour of his s'hort life, and his 
 character appeared in the last moments with the same firm con- 
 trol as in the midday of strength." 
 
 "(p. 61). See "Concord Days" (Roberts Bros., Boston, 
 1872), p. 157-160. 
 
 ^'(p. 62). See North American Review, vol. 51, p. 525. 
 
 CHAPTER III. Emerson and Goethe. 
 
 "(p. 66). "Emerson in Concord," by Edw. W. Emerson, p. 
 54. (Journals, Nov. 15, 1834.) 
 
 '°(p. 68). Cabot, "Memoirs of Ralph Waldo Emerson," I., 
 
 P- 139- 
 
 "(p. 68). J. B. Thayer, "Western Journey," p. 87. 
 
 "(p. 70). To the student and admirer of Emersdn's genius 
 it appears indeed strange and unhappy that the editors of the 
 Centenary Edition did not include this poem in the volume of 
 
l88 APPENDIX. 
 
 poetic output (IX.). Although crude and rugged in form from 
 an assthetic standpoint, the poem has importance, for it ably and 
 tersely expresses the essential tenets of Emerson's ethical doc- 
 trine, and regarded historically, 'has significance in the study of 
 the nature of Emerson's poetic genius. Other poems which have 
 appeared now in the Journals, such as those which commemorate 
 his love for his first wife, Ellen, and are more distinctly personal 
 and human, now tender and playful, and then after her death 
 calm with the dignity of resignation and grief (see J., II., 257 
 and 265; also June, 1831, and July, 1831), certainly deserve a 
 place in any future edition of Emerson's poems which aims to 
 be definitive and complete. 
 
 *'(p- 73). Thus we find quotations of the following nature: 
 No7mlis (per Carlyle) : 
 
 " 'There is a secret attraction towards all points, from within 
 us, diverging from an imfinitely deep centre.' " 
 
 "Character is a perfectly educated will." (J., II,, p. 349.) 
 Schiller (Coleridge's transl. of "Wallenstein") : 
 
 (i) "In your own bosom are your destiny's stars; 
 Confidence in yourself, prompt resolution, 
 That is your Venus ! and the sole malignant, 
 The only one that harmeth you, is Doubt." 
 
 (2) "The Oracle within him, that which lives. 
 
 He must invoke and question — not dead books. 
 Not ordinances, not mould-rotted papers." 
 
 (3) "Of its own beauty is the mind diseased 
 
 And fevers into false creation." (J., April 25, 1831.) 
 
 Gocihe : 
 
 We find pasages taken directly from Carlyle's essays and 
 "Meister," and from Mrs. Austin's "Characteristics" (3 vol. ; 
 London, Effingham Wilson, 1833), and others: 
 
 (1) "'If I wished to find some real inspiration, some pro- 
 found sentiment, some just and striking reflexions for my poet- 
 ical compositions, I saw that I must draw them from my own 
 bosom.'" "Memoirs" (J., II., 3^48). 
 
 (2) " 'I, for my share, cannot understand how men have 
 made themselves believe that God speaks to us through books 
 and 'histories. The man to whom the universe does not reveal 
 directly what relation it has to him — ^whose heart does not tell 
 him what he owes himself and others — that man will scarcely 
 learn it out of books, which generally do little more than give 
 our errors names.'" Goethe, "W. Meister" (J., II., p. 349), 
 
APPSNDIX. 189 
 
 (3) Compare Mrs. Austin, vol. 3, p. 74 ff., and J., II., 349: 
 " 'Every one of my writings has been furnished to me by a 
 
 thousand different persons, a thousand different things — the 
 learned and the ignorant, the wise and the foolish, infancy and 
 age have come in turn, generally without having the least sus- 
 picion" of it, to bring me the offering of their thoughts, their 
 faculties, their experience; often they have sowed the harvest 
 I have reaped; my work is that of an aggregation of beings 
 taken from the whole of nature; it bears the name of Goethe.'" 
 
 (4) Compare Mrs. Austin, II., 263 f., and J., II., 349 : 
 
 " 'The smallest production of nature has the circle of its 
 completeness within itself, and I have only need of eyes to see 
 with in order to discover the relative proportions. I am per- 
 fectly sure that within this circle, however narrow, an entirely 
 genuine existence is enclosed. A work of art, on the other hand, 
 has its completeness out of itself ; the Best lies in the Idea of 
 the artist which he seldom or never reaches; all the rest lies in 
 certain conventional rules which are indeed derived from the 
 nature of art and of mechanical processes, but still are not so 
 easy to decipher as the laws of living nature. In works of art 
 there is much that is traditional ; the works of nature are ever 
 a freshly uttered word of God.' " 
 
 **(p. 74). J. B. Thayer, "Western Journey," p. 17. 
 
 "(p. 74). Compare Journal for Jan. 23, 1834, and letter to 
 Carlyle of Nov. 20, 1834. 
 
 ■"(P- 75)- Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence, I., p. 285. 
 
 "(p- 77)- Letter to Grimm, Jan. 5, 1871. 
 
 "(p. 78). Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence, II., p. 98. 
 
 ■"(p. 78). C. E. Norton, "Letters" (Hougihton-MifHin Co., 
 1913)- 
 
 "(p- 79)- Essay on "Transcendentalism," Eraser's Mag., 
 1864, p. 256. 
 
 °°(P- 79)- Moncure D. Conway, "Autobiography, Memories, 
 and Experiences," 2 vol. (Houghton-MifHin Co., 1904), I., p. 147. 
 
 "(p. 84). In this chapter it is our endeavor to mirror as 
 objectively as possible Emerson's opinion of the German poet. 
 The essays on "Modern Literature" and on "Goethe, the Writer," 
 are fundamental, and most of the quotations are taken directly 
 from them ; the sources of all other quotations are given as 
 Journals, Correspondence, etc., in the notes. 
 
 °^(p. 86). This virtue of Goethe's, "a thing for a word," is 
 repeatedly spoken of in the Anglo-American criticism, by Car- 
 Ivle and most of his successors. 
 
igo APPENDIX. 
 
 "(p. 87). See G. W. Cooke, "Emerson," p. 223, where it is 
 quoted from Emerson's extemporaneous speech at Harvard. 
 
 °*(p. 94). Carlyle-Eraerson Correspondence, I., 29 f. 
 
 ''(P- 9.5). Emerson says elsew!here : "Goethe, the surpassing 
 intellect of modern times, apprehends the spiritual, but is not 
 spiritual." 
 
 "(p. 97). See M. Fuller, "Memoirs," vol. I., p. 242. 
 
 "(p. 99). Compare (Wks„ VIII., p. 331) : 
 
 "Many of his works hung on the easel, from youth to age, 
 and received a stroke in every month and year. A literary 
 astrologer, he never applied himself to any task but at the 
 happy moment when all the stars consented." 
 
 °'(p. loi). See Holmes, "Emerson," p. 315. 
 
 ™(p. loi). For Goethe on the poet, see: "Faust," I,, 134-157 
 (Wks., 13, p. 8) ; "Leihrjahre," Bk. II., ch. 2 (Wks., 17, p. 90 f.). 
 
 "(p. 104). See Holmes, "Emerson," p. 381. 
 
 °'(p. 106). See "Emerson in Concord," p. 65. 
 
 °'(p. 109). Thayer, "Western Journey," p. 17. 
 
 ■"(p. 109). C. E. Norton, "-Letters," p. 488. 
 
 "(p. 109). G. W. Cooke, "Emerson," p. 223. 
 
 °°(p. no). Emerson became acquainted with Margaret Ful- 
 ler in 1835. Frederick Henry Hedge loaned him her manuscript 
 copy of the translation of "Tasso." 
 
 "(p. III). See F. A. Braun, "Margaret Fuller and Goethe," 
 p. 205. 
 
 "'(p. 112). Conway, Autobiography, I., p. 147. 
 
 ""(p. 112). For DeQuincey's opinion, see Works (Edinburgh, 
 Adam & Charles Black, 1870), vol. XL, p. 222-258; and also 
 articles on Goethe and Schiller (Wks., IV., p. 395 and 422). 
 
 "(p. 112). Goodnight, p. 69. 
 
 "(p. 113). Woodbury, "Talks with R. W. Emerson," p. 54. 
 
 "(p. 119). See "Man of Letters" (Wks., X., p. 245) : "The 
 great poem of the age is the disagreeable poem of 'Faust,' of 
 which the 'Festus' of Bailey and the 'Paracelsus' of Browning 
 are English variations." 
 
 "(p. 117). G. W. Cooke, "Emerson,'' p. 223. 
 
 '"(p. 117). C. E. Norton, "Letters," I., p. 4188. 
 
 "(p. 117). J. B. Thayer, "Western Journey," p. 14 and 15. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. Critical Analysis. 
 
 ■In general, see: G. E. Woodberry's "Ralph -Waldo Emer- 
 son," p. 107-157; Schiller's "Uber die asthetische Erziehung des 
 Menschen" (1793-94), and Uber naive und sentimentalische Dich- 
 
j^prENDix. 191 
 
 tur.g" (1795) ; and on Goethe, see the works as given in the 
 bibliography, especially the article by Paulsen, and the books of 
 Harnack, Boucke, and Siebeck. 
 
 '"(p. 131). See Kant's Werke, vol. 6 (1907, Berlin, Georg 
 Reimer), "Die Religion mner'halb der Grenzen der bloszen Ver- 
 nunft" (1793") ; also Paulsen's article and K. Vorlander's "Kant, 
 Schiller, Goethe (Leipzig, 1907), p. 153 ff. Kant's article ap- 
 peared in part in the Berliner Monatschrift- in 1792, "On the 
 Radical Evil in Human Nature." 
 
 "(P- 133)- Compare Tolstoi, "Religion and Morality,'' 1894, 
 where a similar distinction is drawn : "The Christian Ethics not 
 only demands the sacrifice of the personality for (be aggregate 
 of personalities, but also the renunciation of one's own person- 
 ality and of the aggregate of personalities for the purpose of 
 serving God ; but the pagan philosophy investigates only the 
 means for attaining the greatest good of the personality or of 
 the aggregate of personalities." 
 
 "(P- 133)- Compare Emerson (Wks., VI., p. 239) : "Higher 
 than the question of our duration is the question of O'Ur deserv- 
 ing. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he who 
 would be a great soul in the future must be a great soul now." 
 
 Compare, also, F. B. Sanborn, "The Personality of Emerson" 
 (p. 122), where Emerson is quoted: "I think well of Goethe's 
 saying — that if Nature has given us these faculties, and I have 
 employed mine well and faithfully to the end, she is bound still 
 further to explain the questions which they put." 
 
 "(p. 134). 'See Eckermann, "Gesprache mit Goethe'' (Jan. 
 18, 1827). 
 
 ™(p. 136). See Eckermann (April 7, 1829), "Napoleon war 
 darin besonders grosz, dasz er zu jeder Stunde derselbige war. 
 Vor einer Schlacht, wahrend einer Schlacht, naCh einem Siege, 
 nach einem Niederlage, er stand immer auf festen Fiiszen und 
 war immer klar und entsohieden, was zu thun sei." Again, Eck- 
 ermann records for Feb. 17, 1832: "Es ist im Grunde auch alles 
 Thorheit, ob einer etwas aus sich habe, oder ob er es von andern 
 habe; ob einer durch sich wirke, oder ob er durch andere wirke; 
 die Hauptsache ist, dasz man ein groszes Wollen habe und Ge- 
 schick und Beharrlichkeit besitze, es auszufiihren ; alles iibrige 
 ist gleidhgiiltig." 
 
 ™(p. 141) See Eckermann (April 27, 1825) ; also Werke, 
 I., p. 242, in regard to the French Revolution : "Franztum drangt 
 in diesen verworrenen Tagen, wie ehemals L,uthertura es getan, 
 ruhige Bildung zuriick." 
 
192 APPENDIX. 
 
 "(p. 146). James Freeman Clarke, in his "Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury Questions," makes a like statement in regard to Goethe and 
 Schiller: "We admire Goethe; we love Schiller." 
 
 '''(p. 147). Schiller's idealism is clearly and nobly expressed 
 in the poem, "Das Ideal und das Leben" : 
 
 "Aber fliichtet aus der Sinne Schranken 
 In die Freiheit der Gedanken, 
 Und die Furchterscheinung ist entflohn, 
 Und der ew'ge Abgrund wird sich f iillen ; 
 Nehmt die Gottheit auf in euren Willen, 
 Und sie steigt von ihrem Weltenthron. 
 Des Gesetzes strenge Fessel bindet 
 Nur den Sklavensinn, der es verschmaht ; 
 Mit des Menschen Widerstand verschwindet 
 Auch des Gottes Majestat." 
 
 . In his essay on "Anmut und Wiirde," Schiller expresses 'his 
 telief in the freedom-of-the-will and the divinity of the moral 
 will of man. "Auf die Begierde und Verabscheuung erfolgt bei 
 dem Tiere ebenso notwendig Handlung, als Begierde auf Emp- 
 findung und Empfindung auf den auszern Eindruck erfolgte. Es 
 ist hier eine stetig fortlaufende Kette, wo jeder Ring notwendig 
 in den andern greift. Bei dem Menschen ist noch eine Instanz 
 mehr, naralich der Wille, der als ein iibersinnliches Vermogen 
 weder dem Gesetz der Natur so unterworfen ist, dasz ihra nicht 
 vollkommen freie Wahl bliebe, sich entweder naeh diesen oder 
 nach jenem zu ric'hten. Das Tier musz streben, den Schmerz 
 los zu sein; der Mensch kann sich entschlieszen, ihn zu behalten. 
 "Der Wille d?s Menschen ist ein erhabener Begriff, auch 
 dann, wenn. man auf seinen moralischen Gebrauch nicht achtet. 
 Schon der blosze Wille erhebt den 'Menschen iiber die Tierheit ; 
 der moralische erhebt ihn zur Gottheit. Er musz abcr jene zuvor 
 verlassen haben, eh' er sich dieser nahern kann; daher ist es kein 
 geringer Sohritt zur moralischen Freiheit des Willens, durch 
 Brechung der Naturnotwendigkeit in sich, auch in gleichgiiltigen 
 Dingen, den bloszen Willen zu iiben." 
 
 "(p. 147). Compare "Brand" (Ibsen's Wks., Scribner, 1907, 
 p. 11) : 
 
 "But help is idle for the man 
 
 Who nothing ■wills but what he can. 
 
 Ah, life! ah, life! Why art thou then 
 
 So passing sweet to mortal men? 
 
 In every weakling's estimation 
 
APPENDIX. 193 
 
 His own life does as grossly weigh 
 As if the load of man's salvation 
 
 Upon his puny shoulders lay. 
 For every burden he's prepared ; 
 God help us — so his life be spared." 
 
 *'(p. 151). Goethe said of the friendship: "Mein Verhalt- 
 niss zu Schiller griindete sioh auf die entschiedene Richtung bei- 
 der auf einen Zweck, unsere gemeinsame Thatigkeit auf die Ver- 
 schiedenheit der Mittel, wodurch wir jenen zu erreichen streb- 
 
 ten Es ist ein groszer Unterschied, ob der Dichter zura 
 
 AUgemeinen das Besondere sucht, oder im Besondern das Allge- 
 meine schaut." (Wke., 38, p. 261.) And Eckermann (Okt. 7, 
 1827) : ''Ein Gliick fiir raich war es indes, dasz ich 'Schillern 
 hatte. Denn. so verschieden unsere beiderseitigen Naturen auoh 
 waren, so gingen unsere Richtungen auf Eins ; welches denn 
 nnser Verhaltnis so innig machte dasz im Grunde keiner ohne 
 den andern leben konnte." 
 
 Of the general influence of Schiller's philosophical essays 
 Goethe says (Wke., 39, p. 32) : "VVie wunderlich es auch darait 
 gewesen sei, trat erst hervor, als mein Verhaltnis zu Schillern 
 sich belebte. Unsere Gesprache waren durchaus produktiv oder 
 theoretisch, gewohnlich beides zugleich ; er predigte das Evan- 
 gelium der Freiheit, ich wollte die Rechte der Natur nicht ver- 
 kiirzt wissen. Aiis fremidschaftlicher Neigung gegen mich viel- 
 leicht mehr als aus eigner Uberzeugung, behandelte er in den 
 asthetischen Brief en die gute Mutter nicht mit jenen harten 
 Ausdriicken, die mir den Aufsatz iiber Anmut und Wiirde so 
 verha&zt gemacht hatten. Weil ich aber, von meiner Seite hart- 
 nackig und eigensinnig, die Vorziige der griechischen Dichtungs- 
 art, der darauf gegriindeten und von dort herkommlichen Poesie 
 nicht allein hervorhob, sondern ausschlieszlich dlese Weise fiir 
 die einzig rechte und wiinschenswerte gelten liesz, so ward er 
 zu scharferen Nachdenken genotigt, und eben diesem Konflikt 
 verdanken wir die Aufsatze iiber naive und sentimentalische 
 Poesie. Beide Dichtungsweisen sollten sich bequemen, einander 
 gegeniiberstehend sich wechselsweise gleioben Rang zu vergonnen. 
 
 "Er legte hierdurch den ersteni Grund zur ganzen neuen As- 
 theti.k ; denn hellenisoh und romantisch, und was noch fiir 
 Synonymen mochten aufgefunden werden, lassen sich alle dorthin 
 zuriickftihren. wo vom Ubergewicht reeller oder ideeller Behand- 
 lung zuerst die Rede war." 
 
194 APPENDIX. 
 
 '"(p. 152). Compare Emerson's poem, "The Celestial Love'' 
 (Wks., IX., p. 115) : 
 
 "There Past, Present, Future, shoot 
 Triple blossoms from one root ; 
 Substances at base divided, 
 In their summits are united ; 
 There the holy essence rolls. 
 One through separated souls; 
 And the sunny Aeon sleeps 
 Folding Nature in its deeps. 
 And every fair and every good. 
 Known in part, or known impure, 
 To men below. 
 In their archetypes endure. 
 The race of gods. 
 Or those we erring own, 
 Are shadows flitting up and down 
 In the still abodes. 
 The circles of that sea are laws 
 Which publish and which hide the cause." 
 
 The Goethean conception is poetically given in "Faust" (1. 
 628s f.). The realm of the Mutter, where are kept the schemes 
 or typical forms of things, is vague and indefinite. "Ins Un- 
 betretene, Nicht zu Betretende; ein Weg ans Unerbetene, Nicht 
 
 zu Erbittende Yon Einsamkeiten wirst ■umbergetrieben." 
 
 These eternal ideas or types come to possess individual character 
 in the phenomena of nature and life. 
 
 "Bel seinem Schein wirst du die Mutter sehn, 
 Die einen sitzen, andre stehn und gehn, 
 Wie's eben kommt. Gestaltung, Umgestaltung, 
 Des ewigen Sinnes ewige Unterhaltung, 
 Umschwebt von Bildern aller Kreatur ; 
 Sie sehn dich nicht, denn Schemen sehn sie nur." 
 
 ™(p. 152). See Eckermann, 1825, Oktober 15. 
 
 "(p. 159). See "Fragmente uber die Natur" (Wke., 39, p. 
 S) for a statement of which Goethe, though not directly its 
 author, heartily approved: "Ihre (Natur) Krone ist die Liebe. 
 Nur durch sie kommt man ihr nahe. Sie macht Kliifte zwischen 
 alien Wesen, und alles will sich verschlingen. Sie hat alles 
 isoliert um alles zusammenzuziehen. Durch ein paar Ziige aus 
 dem Becher der Liebe halt sie fiir ein Leben voll Miihe schad- 
 loss." 
 
APPENDIX. 195 
 
 *^(p. 163). See Eckermann, 1827, April i. 
 
 ^°(p. t6s). Compare Goethe: "Die Kunst ruht auf einer 
 Art religiosem Sinn, auf einem tiefen unerschiitterliohen Ernst; 
 deswegen sie sidh audi so gern mit der Religion vereinigt. Die 
 Religion bedarf keines Kunstsinnes, sie ruht auf ihretn eigenen 
 Ernst; sie verleiht aber auc'h keinen, so wenig sie Geschmack 
 gibt." 
 
 "(P- 173)- 'Compare Emerson, "Essays,'' 2nd Series, No. 7, 
 "Politics" (Wks., III., p. 199 f.) ; and Schiller, "Uber die asthet- 
 ische Erziehung des Menschen," gter Brief. 
 
 CHAPTER V. Conclusion. 
 
 "(p. 181). See Hermann Grimm, "Life and Times of 
 Goethe." (Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1880.) To the trans- 
 lator. 
 
 2.— BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 EMERSON ■ 
 
 Works : Centenary Edition, edited by Edw. W. Emerson and 
 Waldo E. Forbes; 12 volumes. Houghton, Mitfflin & Co. (Boston 
 and New York). 
 
 Journals: 10 vol. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. (1904-14). 
 
 "Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emer- 
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 J. E. Cabot: "Memoir of R. W. Emerson," 2 vol. Macmil- 
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 G. W. Cooke: "Ralph Waldo Emerson." J. R. Osgood & 
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 G. E. WoodbErry: "Ralph Waldo Emerson" (English Men 
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 ■ R. Garnett: "Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson" (Great 
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 Edw. W. Emerson : "Emerson in Concord." Houghton, 
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196 APPENDIX. 
 
 F. B. Sanborn (editor) : "Genius and Character o£ Emer- 
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 M. D. Conway : "Emerson at Home and Abroad." J. R. 
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 J. B. Thayer: "A Western Journey with Mr. Emerson." 
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 Charles J. Woodbury : "Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson." 
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 Elisabeth L. Caey: "Emerson, Poet and Thinker." G. P. 
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 John J. Chapman : "Emerson and Other Essays." Scrib- 
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 Joel Benton : "Emerson as a Poet." M. F. Mansfield & A. 
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 John AlbEE: "Remembrances of Emerson." Robert Grier 
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 F. B. Sanborn : "The Personality of Emerson." Charles E. 
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 Alexander Ireland : "Ralph Waldo Emerson." Simpkin, 
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 Edwin D. Mead : "The Influence of Emerson." American 
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 O. \y. Firkins : "Ralph Waldo Emerson." Houghton, Mif- 
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 GOETHE : 
 
 Werke : Jubilaums-Ausgabe, Stuttgart and Berlin, 'Cotta, 
 1902-07. 
 
 Biographies of R. M. Meyer (2 vol., Berlin, Ernst Hoffman 
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 E. A. BouCKE: "Goethe's Weltanschauung auf Historischer 
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 Otto Harnack : "Goethe in der Epoche seiner VoUendung." 
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 "Goethe und die Romantik," 2 vol., edited by Carl Schiidde- 
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 Fr. Paulsen : . (Goethe Jahr Buch, Vol. 23) "Goethes Eth- 
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APPENDIX. 197 
 
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 OsKAR WalzEl: "Deutsclie Romantilc." B. G. Teubner, 
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 HISTORICAL: 
 
 "The Dial" : A magazine for literature, philosophy, and 
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 O. B. Froi'hingham : "Transcendentalism in New England." 
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 Harold Clarke Goddard : "Studies in New England Tran- 
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 "Memorial History of Boston," Vol. 4. Boston, J. R. Os- 
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 S. H. Goodnight: "German Literature in American Maga- 
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 James Freeman Clarke: "Nineteenth Century Questions.'' 
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 J. F. Clarke: "Autobiography, Diary, and Correspondence,'' 
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 Calvin Thomas : "Goethe Jahr Buch," Vol. 24, p. 132. "Em- 
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 Barrett Wendell: "Literary History of America'' (Scrib- 
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 Ricarda Huch : "Bliithezeit der Romantik." Leipzig, 1901. 
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 R. M. WernaER : "Romanticism and the Romantic School 
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