not have been "tempted like as we are." But our divine champion wielded the sword of the Spirit with such masterly skill that the great adversary was compelled to retreat before the invincible and victorious Son of God. The devil "departed from him for a season." 3. "And being found in fashion as a man." Christ had the physical constitution of man, its liability to suffering and death. If he had been physically immortal, he could not have died at all. But if he was to atone for our sins by the sacrifice of his own life, then he must be mortal like other men. It is evident that he was mortal, for he actually died upon the cross. "He humbled himself." His whole life was a continuous and increasing humiliation, at last "becoming obedient even unto death." And here is the tragic consummation of this wonderful kenosis—“even the death of the cross "—the most ignominious death, the punishment given to the worst of felons. Jesus was crucified between two thieves, as if he were the chief criminal of them all. Wicked men and fallen angels triumphed over him. In the hour of his final agony the Father veiled his face. Then his glory was totally eclipsed, his majesty was buried in Joseph's tomb, and his soul went down into Hades. Such was the profound self-abasement of Jesus Christ. Shae Major ART. IX.-GOETHE. EMERSON, describing his visit to Wordsworth, in 1833, says: "He proceeded to abuse Goethe's Wilhelm Meister heartily. It was full of all manner of fornication. . . . He had never gone farther than the first part; so disgusted was he that he threw the book across the room."* Wordsworth is by no means the only judge who has "never gone farther than the first part," and it is doubtful whether any great writer has ever been approached with more prejudice. In more recent years some of the blame may perhaps be laid upon the Germans themselves, who, especially since the Franco-Prussian War, have often taken on an air as though Goethe had exhausted poetry, and as though the English-speaking world must look to Germany for all literary ideals; whereas, every great literary and intellectual uplift in Germany, and by no means least in the case of Goethe himself, goes back directly to England. The depreciators of Goethe are not usually those who have come to know him at first hand, and they are responsible for much suffering from that chief of all earthly trials, the dogmatism of the uninstructed. He never condescended to charlatanism in order to attract the masses, and he made use of difficult allegory in conveying recondite truths. We must follow Goethe historically, remembering that his youth was stormy and unclarified; we must take into account the most varied and apparently contradictory manifestations, and deduce our result from the sum total. The purpose must be separated from the subject-matter; the works were written boldly and freely, and must be received and interpreted in the same spirit which attended their birth. Problematical natures are often delineated, as in the dramas of Shakespeare, who gives us the best key to the interpretation of our poet. Nor must we forget his own desire: Whom do I wish for my reader? The one most candid, forgetting Certain it is that the mighty personality of Goethe is one of * Works, v, 24. + Comp. Harnack, Goethe in der Epoche seiner Vollendung, p. 201. the great possessions of our race, and not yet to be dispensed with. The more important men who have devoted themselves to German literary studies—such as Carlyle, Wilhelm Scherer, Herman Grimm, and Erich Schmidt-have been attracted irresistibly and more and more exclusively to Goethe as the central fact, just as every sincere student of art becomes more and more subject to the influence of the Greeks. While it is a most costly thing to attempt to maintain decaying relics of bygone ages, there are heritages the loss of which would sensibly impoverish mankind. Goethe's genius is, before all, a poetic and artistic one. "It was for æsthetic ends that I was created,” he said in a conversation with Friedrich von Müller.* From his works alone may be deduced a firmly grounded system of normal æsthetics. The pure beauty of his art is perennial, and Still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. How immense his literary debt to England, even in the socalled "German" element of Gemütlichkeit, need not be discussed here. In the period of his creative maturity he is particularly the prophet of Hellenism in art and letters.† After the most varied attempts and studies his artistic theories became settled into a firm conviction that Greek art embodies the noblest simplicity and quiet greatness, and gives permanent and absolute canons of literary excellence, combining naturalness and high culture, freedom and law. He says: Clearness of vision, cheerfulness of acceptance, easy grace of expression, are the qualities which delight us; and now, when we affirm that we find all these in the genuine Grecian works, achieved in the noblest material, the best-proportioned form, with certainty and completeness of execution, we shall always be understood if we refer to them as a basis and a standard. Let each one be a Grecian in his own way; but let him be one. t A concise putting of his final creed is contained in the little poetical dedications-a feature borrowed by Emerson * January 20, 1824. + Michaelis, Goethe und die Antike, Strassburger Goethevorträge, 115 ff. for his essays-prefixed to his treatise on Art and Antiquity, 1821: Homer has long been named with praise, And Phidias in these later days. Be ye welcomed, noble strangers, This gospel of Greek art was preached with a call for enthusiasm and devotion, but with a demand for severe disciplinary preparation and slow training, as in the days of art under Pericles or the Medici. This element preserved Goethe from the unsound tendencies of the most modern "return to nature." He seeks nature where it is most healthy and beautiful; the crying evil of the present naturalistic movement is that it chooses the vile and the unlovely as an end to its efforts, and art thereby defeats its own chief purpose. Goethe's feeling for the wholesomeness, vigor, and moderation of the Greeks protected him from sickly pessimism and brutal naturalism. For Goethe's great service to the national literature lay chiefly in the fact that he did return to nature. He holds the mirror up in a way that only Shakespeare has surpassed, and of all natural phenomena the soul of man claims his chief interest, as is especially shown in his dramatic characters. From the Heath-rose and Werther, both created for an age that needed "heart" above all things, to the end of his life his works come forth from a full, warm feeling; they are strong, genuine impressions, put into symmetrical form. He often emphasizes the preeminence of truth in art: "The inner content of the object to be elaborated is the beginning and end of art;"*"I do all honor to rhyme and rhythm, but the really deep and effective, the truly formative and inspiring part of a poet's work, is that which still remains after it has been translated into prose;" + "All talent is wasted if it be spent upon an unworthy object." Those who see in our * Dichtung und Wahrheit, vii. † Id., xi. Conversations with Eckermann, i, 55. artist one who sacrificed content and purpose to æsthetic beauty err grievously. "Art for art's sake" in its narrower sense had for him no meaning. With all the joyousness and grace and charm of his art, he wrought his apparently most casual work with an underlying purpose of "asserting eternal Providence and justifying the ways of God to men." He well terms his "epigrammatic" poems "the sportive embodiment of profound thought." The artistic clearness, serenity, and repose are so perfect that we can easily forget that the artist uses all these qualities as the expression of a deep intent. From the simplest love motive to the profoundest speculations in philosophy all is breathed into matchless form, symmetrical, melodious, and pure; largely on this account is it true of his works that "the human race takes charge of them that they shall not perish." The realism which sees clearly the facts of life is joined to the idealism which transmutes facts into the higher truth. Goethe's sonnet "Nature and Art" (1802) sums up definitively the poet's æsthetic theory: Nature and art seem ofttimes to be foes, Let us but make an end to dull repose: All culture, as I hold, must take this course: Unbridled spirits ever strive in vain Perfection's radiant summit to attain. Who seeks great ends must straitly curb his force; Even Professor du Bois-Reymond, in his trenchant attack upon the influence of Goethe, † calls him "the chief lyric poet of all time." Goethe emancipated Germany from bondage to the "correct"-of which he said, "Correctness is not worth sixpence if it has nothing more to offer "--by showing the *We have in Werther (Am 26. Mai) a strong expression of his youthful antipathy to rules in matters of art. + Goethe und kein Ende, 1883, p. 13. |