Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  543

  Every investigator must before all things look upon himself as one who is summoned to serve on a jury. He has only to consider how far the statement of the case is complete and clearly set forth by the evidence. Then he draws his conclusion and gives his vote, whether it be that his opinion coincides with that of the foreman or not.

  544

  And in acting thus he remains equally at ease whether the majority agree with him or he finds himself in a minority. For he has done what he could: he has expressed his convictions; and he is not master of the minds or hearts of others.

  545

  In the world of science, however, these sentiments have never been of much account. There everything depends on making opinion prevail and dominate; few men are really independent; the majority draws the individual after it.

  546

  The history of philosophy, of science, of religion, all shows that opinions spread in masses, but that that always comes to the front which is more easily grasped, that is to say, is most suited and agreeable to the human mind in its ordinary condition. Nay, he who has practised self-culture in the higher sense may always reckon upon meeting an adverse majority.

  547

  There is much that is true which does not admit of being calculated; just as there are a great many things that cannot be brought to the test of a decisive experiment.

  548

  It is just for this that man stands so high, that what could not otherwise be brought to light should be brought to light in him.

  What is a musical string, and all its mechanical division, in comparison with the musician’s ear? May we not also say, what are the elementary phenomena of nature itself compared with man, who must control and modify them all before he can in any way assimilate them to himself?

  549

  To a new truth there is nothing more hurtful than an old error.

  550

  The ultimate origin of things is completely beyond our faculties; hence when we see anything come into being, we look upon it as having been already there. This is why we find the theory of emboîtement intelligible.

  551

  There are many problems in natural science on which we cannot fittingly speak unless we call metaphysics to our aid; but not the wisdom of the schools, which consists in mere verbiage. It is that which was before physics, exists with it, and will be after it.

  552

  Since men are really interested in nothing but their own opinions, every one who puts forward an opinion looks about him right and left for means of strengthening himself and others in it. A man avails himself of the truth so long as it is serviceable; but he seizes on what is false with a passionate eloquence as soon as he can make a momentary use of it; whether it be to dazzle others with it as a kind of half-truth, or to employ it as a stopgap for effecting an apparent union between things that have been disjointed. This experience at first caused me annoyance, and then sorrow; and now it is a source of mischievous satisfaction. I have pledged myself never again to expose a proceeding of this kind.

  553

  Everything that we call Invention or Discovery in the higher sense of the word is the serious exercise and activity of an original feeling for truth, which, after a long course of silent cultivation, suddenly flashes out into fruitful knowledge. It is a revelation working from within on the outer world, and lets a man feel that he is made in the image of God. It is a synthesis of World and Mind, giving the most blessed assurance of the eternal harmony of things.

  554

  A man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible; otherwise he would not try to fathom it.

  555

  There are pedants who are also rascals, and they are the worst of all.

  556

  A man does not need to have seen or experienced everything himself. But if he is to commit himself to another’s experiences and his way of putting them, let him consider that he has to do with three things — the object in question and two subjects.

  557

  The supreme achievement would be to see that stating a fact is starting a theory.

  558

  If I acquiesce at last in some ultimate fact of nature, it is, no doubt, only resignation; but it makes a great difference whether the resignation takes place at the limits of human faculty, or within the hypothetical boundaries of my own narrow individuality.

  559

  If we look at the problems raised by Aristotle, we are astonished at his gift of observation. What wonderful eyes the Greeks had for many things! Only they committed the mistake of being over-hasty, of passing straightway from the phenomenon to the explanation of it, and thereby produced certain theories that are quite inadequate. But this is the mistake of all times, and still made in our own day.

  560

  Hypotheses are cradle-songs by which the teacher lulls his scholars to sleep. The thoughtful and honest observer is always learning more and more of his limitations; he sees that the further knowledge spreads, the more numerous are the problems that make their appearance.

  561

  Our mistake is that we doubt what is certain and want to establish what is uncertain. My maxim in the study of Nature is this: hold fast what is certain and keep a watch on what is uncertain.

  562

  What a master a man would be in his own subject if he taught nothing useless!

  563

  The greatest piece of folly is that every man thinks himself compelled to hand down what people think they have known.

  564

  If many a man did not feel obliged to repeat what is untrue, because he has said it once, the world would have been quite different.

  565

  Every man looks at the world lying ready before him, ordered and fashioned into a complete whole, as after all but an element out of which his endeavour is to create a special world suited to himself. Capable men lay hold of the world without hesitation and try to shape their course as best they can; others dally over it, and some doubt even of their own existence.

  The man who felt the full force of this fundamental truth would dispute with no one, but look upon another’s mode of thought equally with his own, as merely a phenomenon. For we find almost daily that one man can think with ease what another cannot possibly think at all; and that, too, not in matters which might have some sort of effect upon their common weal or woe, but in things which cannot touch them at all.

  566

  There is nothing more odious than the majority; it consists of a few powerful men to lead the way; of accommodating rascals and submissive weaklings; and of a mass of men who trot after them, without in the least knowing their own mind.

  567

  When I observe the luminous progress and expansion of natural science in modern times, I seem to myself like a traveller going eastwards at dawn, and gazing at the growing light with joy, but also with impatience; looking forward with longing to the advent of the full and final light, but, nevertheless, having to turn away his eyes when the sun appeared, unable to bear the splendour he had awaited with so much desire.

  568

  We praise the eighteenth century for concerning itself chiefly with analysis. The task remaining to the nineteenth is to discover the false syntheses which prevail, and to analyse their contents anew.

  569

  A school may be regarded as a single individual who talks to himself for a hundred years, and takes an extraordinary pleasure in his own being, however foolish and silly it may be.

  570

  In science it is a service of the highest merit to seek out those fragmentary truths attained by the ancients, and to develop them further.

  571

  If a man devotes himself to the promotion of science, he is firstly opposed, and then he is informed that his ground is already occupied. At first men will allow no value to what we tell them, and then they behave as if they knew it all themselves.

  572

  Nature fills all space with her limitless pr
oductivity. If we observe merely our own earth, everything that we call evil and unfortunate is so because Nature cannot provide room for everything that comes into existence, and still less endow it with permanence.

  573

  Everything that comes into being seeks room for itself and desires duration: hence it drives something else from its place and shortens its duration.

  574

  There is so much of cryptogamy in phanerogamy that centuries will not decipher it.

  575

  What a true saying it is that he who wants to deceive mankind must before all things make absurdity plausible.

  576

  The further knowledge advances, the nearer we come to the unfathomable: the more we know how to use our knowledge, the better we see that the unfathomable is of no practical use.

  577

  The finest achievement for a man of thought is to have fathomed what may be fathomed, and quietly to revere the unfathomable.

  578

  The discerning man who acknowledges his limitations is not far off perfection.

  579

  There are two things of which a man cannot be careful enough: of obstinacy if he confines himself to his own line of thought; of incompetency, if he goes beyond it.

  580

  Incompetency is a greater obstacle to perfection than one would think.

  581

  The century advances; but every individual begins anew.

  582

  What friends do with us and for us is a real part of our life; for it strengthens and advances our personality. The assault of our enemies is not part of our life; it is only part of our experience; we throw it off and guard ourselves against it as against frost, storm, rain, hail, or any other of the external evils which may be expected to happen.

  583

  A man cannot live with every one, and therefore he cannot live for every one. To see this truth aright is to place a high value upon one’s friends, and not to hate or persecute one’s enemies. Nay, there is hardly any greater advantage for a man to gain than to find out, if he can, the merits of his opponents: it gives him a decided ascendency over them.

  584

  Every one knows how to value what he has attained in life; most of all the man who thinks and reflects in his old age. He has a comfortable feeling that it is something of which no one can rob him.

  585

  The best metempsychosis is for us to appear again in others.

  586

  It is very seldom that we satisfy ourselves; all the more consoling is it to have satisfied others.

  587

  We look back upon our life only as on a thing of broken pieces, because our misses and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have done, and attained.

  588

  The sympathetic youth sees nothing of this; he reads, enjoys, and uses the youth of one who has gone before him, and rejoices in it with all his heart, as though he had once been what he now is.

  589

  Science helps us before all things in this, that it somewhat lightens the feeling of wonder with which Nature fills us; then, however, as life becomes more and more complex, it creates new facilities for the avoidance of what would do us harm and the promotion of what will do us good.

  590

  It is always our eyes alone, our way of looking at things. Nature alone knows what she means now, and what she had meant in the past.

  NATURE: APHORISMS

  Nature! We are surrounded by her and locked in her clasp: powerless to leave her, and powerless to come closer to her. Unasked and unwarned she takes us up into the whirl of her dance, and hurries on with us till we are weary and fall from her arms.

  She creates new forms without end: what exists now, never was before; what was, comes not again; all is new and yet always the old.

  We live in the midst of her and are strangers. She speaks to us unceasingly and betrays not her secret. We are always influencing her and yet can do her no violence.

  Individuality seems to be all her aim, and she cares nought for individuals. She is always building and always destroying, and her workshop is not to be approached.

  Nature lives in her children only, and the mother, where is she? She is the sole artist, — out of the simplest materials the greatest diversity; attaining, with no trace of effort, the finest perfection, the closest precision, always softly veiled. Each of her works has an essence of its own; every shape that she takes is in idea utterly isolated; and yet all forms one.

  She plays a drama; whether she sees it herself, we know not; and yet she plays it for us, who stand but a little way off.

  There is constant life in her, motion and development; and yet she remains where she was. She is eternally changing, nor for a moment does she stand still. Of rest she knows nothing, and to all stagnation she has affixed her curse. She is steadfast; her step is measured, her exceptions rare, her laws immutable.

  She has thought, and she ponders unceasingly; not as a man, but as Nature. The meaning of the whole she keeps to herself, and no one can learn it of her.

  Men are all in her, and she in all men. With all she plays a friendly game, and rejoices the more a man wins from her. With many her game is so secret, that she brings it to an end before they are aware of it.

  Even what is most unnatural is Nature; even the coarsest Philistinism has something of her genius. Who does not see her everywhere, sees her nowhere aright.

  She loves herself, and clings eternally to herself with eyes and hearts innumerable. She has divided herself that she may be her own delight. She is ever making new creatures spring up to delight in her, and imparts herself insatiably.

  She rejoices in illusion. If a man destroys this in himself and others, she punishes him like the hardest tyrant. If he follows her in confidence, she presses him to her heart as it were her child.

  Her children are numberless. To no one of them is she altogether niggardly; but she has her favourites, on whom she lavishes much, and for whom she makes many a sacrifice. Over the great she has spread the shield of her protection.

  She spurts forth her creatures out of nothing, and tells them not whence they come and whither they go. They have only to go their way: she knows the path.

  Her springs of action are few, but they never wear out: they are always working, always manifold.

  The drama she plays is always new, because she is always bringing new spectators. Life is her fairest invention, and Death is her device for having life in abundance.

  She envelops man in darkness, and urges him constantly to the light. She makes him dependent on the earth, heavy and sluggish, and always rouses him up afresh.

  She creates wants, because she loves movement. How marvellous that she gains it all so easily! Every want is a benefit, soon satisfied, soon growing again. If she gives more, it is a new source of desire; but the balance quickly rights itself.

  Every moment she starts on the longest journeys, and every moment reaches her goal.

  She amuses herself with a vain show; but to us her play is all-important.

  She lets every child work at her, every fool judge of her, and thousands pass her by and see nothing; and she has her joy in them all, and in them all finds her account.

  Man obeys her laws even in opposing them: he works with her even when he wants to work against her.

  Everything she gives is found to be good, for first of all she makes it indispensable. She lingers, that we may long for presence; she hurries by, that we may not grow weary of her.

  Speech or language she has none; but she creates tongues and hearts through which she feels and speaks.

  Her crown is Love. Only through Love can we come near her. She puts gulfs between all things, and all things strive to be interfused. She isolates everything, that she may draw everything together. With a few draughts from the cup of Love she repays for a life full of trouble.

  She is all things. She rewards herself and punishes herself; and in
herself rejoices and is distressed. She is rough and gentle, loving and terrible, powerless and almighty. In her everything is always present. Past or Future she knows not. The Present is her Eternity. She is kind. I praise her with all her works. She is wise and still. No one can force her to explain herself, or frighten her into a gift that she does not give willingly. She is crafty, but for a good end; and it is best not to notice her cunning.

  She is whole and yet never finished. As she works now, so can she work for ever.

  To every one she appears in a form of his own. She hides herself in a thousand names and terms, and is always the same.

  She has placed me in this world; she will also lead me out of it. I trust myself to her. She may do with me as she pleases. She will not hate her work. I did not speak of her. No! what is true and what is false, she has spoken it all. Everything is her fault, everything is her merit.

  The Criticism

  GOETHE – THE WRITER by Ralph Waldo Emerson

  I find a provision in the constitution of the world for the writer or secretary, who is to report the doings of the miraculous spirit of life that everywhere throbs and works. His office is a reception of the facts into the mind, and then a selection of the eminent and characteristic experiences.

  Nature will be reported. All things are engaged in writing their history. The planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river, its channel in the soil; the animal, its bones in the stratum; the fern and leaf their modest epitaph in the coal. The falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand or the stone. Not a foot steps into the snow, or along the ground, but prints in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. Every act of the man inscribes itself in the memories of his fellows, and in his own manners and face. The air is full of sounds; the sky, of tokens; the ground is all memoranda and signatures; and every object covered over with hints, which speak to the intelligent.