Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  375

  It does not look well for monarchs to speak through the press, for power should act and not talk. The projects of the liberal party always bear being read: the man who is overpowered may at least express his views in speech, because he cannot act. When Mazarin was shown some satirical songs on a new tax, ‘Let them sing,’ said he, ‘as long as they pay.’

  376

  Vanity is a desire of personal glory, the wish to be appreciated, honoured, and run after, not because of one’s personal qualities, merits, and achievements, but because of one’s individual existence. At best, therefore, it is a frivolous beauty whom it befits.

  377

  The most important matters of feeling as of reason, of experience as of reflection, should be treated of only by word of mouth. The spoken word at once dies if it is not kept alive by some other word following on it and suited to the hearer. Observe what happens in social converse. If the word is not dead when it reaches the hearer, he murders it at once by a contradiction, a stipulation, a condition, a digression, an interruption, and all the thousand tricks of conversation. With the written word the case is still worse. No one cares to read anything to which he is not already to some extent accustomed: he demands the known and the familiar under an altered form. Still the written word has this advantage, that it lasts and can await the time when it is allowed to take effect.

  378

  Both what is reasonable and what is unreasonable have to undergo the like contradiction.

  379

  Dialectic is the culture of the spirit of contradiction, which is given to man that he may learn to perceive the differences between things.

  380

  With those who are really of like disposition with himself a man cannot long be at variance; he will always come to an agreement again. With those who are really of adverse disposition, he may in vain try to preserve harmony; he will always come to a separation again.

  381

  Opponents fancy they refute us when they repeat their own opinion and pay no attention to ours.

  382

  People who contradict and dispute should now and then remember that not every mode of speech is intelligible to every one.

  383

  Every man hears only what he understands.

  384

  I am quite prepared to find that many a reader will disagree with me; but when he has a thing before him in black and white, he must let it stand. Another reader may perhaps take up the very same copy and agree with me.

  385

  The truest liberality is appreciation.

  386

  For the strenuous man the difficulty is to recognise the merits of elder contemporaries and not let himself be hindered by their defects.

  387

  Some men think about the defects of their friends, and there is nothing to be gained by it. I have always paid attention to the merits of my enemies, and found it an advantage.

  388

  There are many men who fancy they understand whatever they experience.

  389

  The public must be treated like women: they must be told absolutely nothing but what they like to hear.

  390

  Every age of man has a certain philosophy answering to it. The child comes out as a realist: he finds himself as convinced that pears and apples exist as that he himself exists. The youth in a storm of inner passion is forced to turn his gaze within, and feel in advance what he is going to be: he is changed into an idealist. But the man has every reason to become a sceptic: he does well to doubt whether the means he has chosen to his end are the right ones. Before and during action he has every reason for keeping his understanding mobile, that he may not afterwards have to grieve over a false choice. Yet when he grows old he will always confess himself a mystic: he sees that so much seems to depend on chance; that folly succeeds and wisdom fails; that good and evil fortune are brought unexpectedly to the same level; so it is and so it has been, and old age acquiesces in that which is and was and will be.

  391

  When a man grows old he must consciously remain at a certain stage.

  392

  It does not become an old man to run after the fashion, either in thought or in dress. But he must know where he is, and what the others are aiming at.

  What is called fashion is the tradition of the moment. All tradition carries with it a certain necessity for people to put themselves on a level with it.

  393

  We have long been busy with the critique of reason. I should like to see a critique of common-sense. It would be a real benefit to mankind if we could convincingly prove to the ordinary intelligence how far it can go; and that is just as much as it fully requires for life on this earth.

  394

  The thinker makes a great mistake when he asks after cause and effect: they both together make up the indivisible phenomenon.

  395

  All practical men try to bring the world under their hands; all thinkers, under their heads. How far each succeeds, they may both see for themselves.

  396

  Shall we say that a man thinks only when he cannot think out that of which he is thinking?

  397

  What is invention or discovery? It is the conclusion of what we were looking for.

  398

  It is with history as with nature and with everything of any depth, it may be past, present, or future: the further we seriously pursue it, the more difficult are the problems that appear. The man who is not afraid of them, but attacks them bravely, has a feeling of higher culture and greater ease the further he progresses.

  399

  Every phenomenon is within our reach if we treat it as an inclined plane, which is of easy ascent, though the thick end of the wedge may be steep and inaccessible.

  400

  If a man would enter upon some course of knowledge, he must either be deceived or deceive himself, unless external necessity irresistibly determines him. Who would become a physician if, at one and the same time, he saw before him all the horrible sights that await him?

  401

  How many years must a man do nothing before he can at all know what is to be done and how to do it!

  402

  Duty: where a man loves what he commands himself to do.

  LITERATURE AND ART

  403

  When Madame Roland was on the scaffold, she asked for pen and paper, to note the peculiar thoughts that hovered about her on the last journey. It is a pity they were refused, for in a tranquil mind thoughts rise up at the close of life hitherto unthinkable; like blessed inward voices, alighting in glory on the summits of the past.

  404

  Literature is a fragment of fragments: the least of what happened and was spoken, has been written; and of the things that have been written, very few have been preserved.

  405

  And yet, with all the fragmentary nature of literature, we find thousand fold repetition; which shows how limited is man’s mind and destiny.

  406

  Excellent work is unfathomable, approach it as you will.

  407

  It is not language in itself which is correct or forcible or elegant, but the mind that is embodied in it; and so it is not for a man to determine whether he will give his calculations or speeches or poems the desired qualities: the question is whether Nature has given him the intellectual and moral qualities which fit him for the work, — the intellectual power of observation and insight, the moral power of repelling the evil spirits that might hinder him from paying respect to truth.

  408

  The appeal to posterity springs from the pure, strong feeling of the existence of something imperishable; something that, even though it be not at once recognised, will in the end be gratified by finding the minority turn into a majority.

  409

  When a new literature succeeds, it obscures the effect of an earlier one, and its own effect predominates; so that it is well, from time to time, to look back. What
is original in us is best preserved and quickened if we do not lose sight of those who have gone before us.

  410

  The most original authors of modern times are so, not because they produce what is new, but only because they are able to say things the like of which seem never to have been said before.

  411

  Thus the best sign of originality lies in taking up a subject and then developing it so fully as to make every one confess that he would hardly have found so much in it.

  412

  There are many thoughts that come only from general culture, like buds from green branches. When roses bloom, you see them blooming everywhere.

  413

  Lucidity is a due distribution of light and shade.’ Hamann.

  414

  A man who has no acquaintance with foreign languages knows nothing of his own.

  415

  We must remember that there are many men who, without being productive, are anxious to say something important, and the results are most curious.

  416

  Deep and earnest thinkers are in a difficult position with regard to the public.

  417

  Some books seem to have been written, not to teach us anything, but to let us know that the author has known something.

  418

  An author can show no greater respect for his public than by never bringing it what it expects, but what he himself thinks right and proper in that stage of his own and others’ culture in which for the time he finds himself.

  419

  The so-called Nature-poets are men of active talent, with a fresh stimulus and reaction from an over-cultured, stagnant, mannered epoch of art. They cannot avoid commonplace.

  420

  Productions are now possible which, without being bad, have no value. They have no value, because they contain nothing; and they are not bad, because a general form of good-workmanship is present to the author’s mind.

  421

  All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible.

  422

  A romance is a subjective epic in which the author begs leave to treat the world after his own ideas. The only question is, whether he has any ideas; the rest will follow of itself.

  423

  Subjective or so-called sentimental poetry has now been admitted to an equality with objective and descriptive. This was inevitable; because otherwise the whole of modern poetry would have to be discarded. It is now obvious that when men of truly poetical genius appear, they will describe more of the particular feelings of the inner life than of the general facts of the great life of the world. This has already taken place to such a degree that we have a poetry without figures of speech, which can by no means be refused all praise.

  424

  Superstition is the poetry of life, and so it does not hurt the poet to be superstitious.

  425

  That glorious hymn, Veni Creator Spiritus, is really an appeal to genius. That is why it speaks so powerfully to men of intellect and power.

  426

  Translators are like busy match-makers: they sing the praises of some half-veiled beauty, and extol her charms, and arouse an irresistible longing for the original.

  427

  A Spinoza in poetry becomes a Machiavelli in philosophy.

  428

  Against the three unities there is nothing to be said, if the subject is very simple; but there are times when thrice three unities, skilfully interwoven, produce a very pleasant effect.

  429

  The sentimentality of the English is humorous and tender; of the French, popular and pathetic; of the Germans, naïve and realistic.

  430

  Mysticism is the scholastic of the heart, the dialectic of the feelings.

  431

  If a man sets out to reproach an author with obscurity, he should first of all examine his own mind, to see if he is himself all clearness within. Twilight makes even plain writing illegible.

  432

  It is with books as with new acquaintances. At first we are highly delighted, if we find a general agreement, — if we are pleasantly moved on any of the chief sides of our existence. With a closer acquaintance differences come to light; and then reasonable conduct mainly consists in not shrinking back at once, as may happen in youth, but in keeping firm hold of the things in which we agree, and being quite clear about the things in which we differ, without on that account desiring any union.

  433

  In psychological reflection the greatest difficulty is this: that inner and outer must always be viewed in parallel lines, or, rather, interwoven. It is a continual systole and diastole, an inspiration and an expiration of the living soul. If this cannot be put into words, it should be carefully marked and noted.

  434

  My relations with Schiller rested on the decided tendency of both of us towards a single aim, and our common activity rested on the diversity of the means by which we endeavoured to attain that aim.

  435

  Once when a slight difference was mentioned between us, of which I was reminded by a passage in a letter of his, I made the following reflections: There is a great difference between a poet seeking the particular for the universal, and seeing the universal in the particular. The one gives rise to Allegory, where the particular serves only as instance or example of the general; but the other is the true nature of Poetry, namely, the expression of the particular without any thought of, or reference to, the general. If a man grasps the particular vividly, he also grasps the general, without being aware of it at the time; or he may make the discovery long afterwards.

  436

  There may be eclectic philosophers, but not an eclectic philosophy.

  437

  But every one is an eclectic who, out of the things that surround and take place about him, appropriates what is suited to his nature; and this is what is meant by culture and progress, in matters of theory or practice.

  438

  Various maxims of the ancients, which we are wont to repeat again and again, had a meaning quite different from that which is apt to attach to them in later times.

  439

  The saying that no one who is unacquainted with or a stranger to geometry should enter the philosopher’s school, does not mean that a man must become a mathematician to attain the wisdom of the world.

  440

  Geometry is here taken in its primary elements, such as are contained in Euclid and laid before every beginner; and then it is the most perfect propædeutic and introduction to philosophy.

  441

  When a boy begins to understand that an invisible point must always come before a visible one, and that the shortest way between two points is a straight line, before he can draw it on his paper with a pencil, he experiences a certain pride and pleasure. And he is not wrong; for he has the source of all thought opened to him; idea and reality, potentia et actu, are become clear; the philosopher has no new discovery to bring him; as a mathematician, he has found the basis of all thought for himself.

  442

  And if we turn to that significant utterance, Know thyself, we must not explain it in an ascetic sense. It is in nowise the self-knowledge of our modern hypochondrists, humorists, and self-tormentors. It simply means: pay some attention to yourself; take note of yourself; so that you may know how you come to stand towards those like you and towards the world. This involves no psychological torture; every capable man knows and feels what it means. It is a piece of good advice which every one will find of the greatest advantage in practice.

  443

  Let us remember how great the ancients were; and especially how the Socratic school holds up to us the source and standard of all life and action, and bids us not indulge in empty speculation, but live and do.

  444

  So long as our scholastic education takes us back to antiquity and furthers the study of the Greek and Latin languages, we may congratulate ourselves th
at these studies, so necessary for the higher culture, will never disappear.

  445

  If we set our gaze on antiquity and earnestly study it, in the desire to form ourselves thereon, we get the feeling as if it were only then that we really became men.

  446

  The pedagogue, in trying to write and speak Latin, has a higher and grander idea of himself than would be permissible in ordinary life.

  447

  In the presence of antiquity, the mind that is susceptible to poetry and art feels itself placed in the most pleasing ideal state of nature; and even to this day the Homeric hymns have the power of freeing us, at any rate, for moments, from the frightful burden which the tradition of several thousand years has rolled upon us.

  448

  There is no such thing as patriotic art and patriotic science. Both art and science belong, like all things great and good, to the whole world, and can be furthered only by a free and general interchange of ideas among contemporaries, with continual reference to the heritage of the past as it is known to us.

  449

  Poetical talent is given to peasant as well as to knight; all that is required is that each shall grasp his position and treat it worthily.

  450

  An historic sense means a sense so cultured that, in valuing the deserts and merits of its own time, it takes account also of the past.

  451

  The best that history gives us is the enthusiasm it arouses.

  452

  The historian’s duty is twofold: first towards himself, then towards his readers. As regards himself, he must carefully examine into the things that could have happened; and, for the reader’s sake, he must determine what actually did happen. His action towards himself is a matter between himself and his colleagues; but the public must not see into the secret that there is little in history which can be said to be positively determined.

  453

  The historian’s duty is to separate the true from the false, the certain from the uncertain, and the doubtful from that which cannot be accepted.

  454

  It is seldom that any one of great age becomes historical to himself, and finds his contemporaries become historical to him, so that he neither cares nor is able to argue with any one.

  455

  On a closer examination of the matter, it will be found that the historian does not easily grasp history as something historical. In whatever age he may live, the historian always writes as though he himself had been present at the time of which he treats, instead of simply narrating the facts and movements of that time. Even the mere chronicler only points more or less to his own limitations, or the peculiarities of his town or monastery or age.