subject. It is no longer the classical ideal or the cultivation of the aesthetic faculties which are to effect the redemption of the soul of Faust. Helen represents the abstract sense of beauty, the informing spirit of art and Hellenism, the basis of the highest human culture. But although Goethe gives a moral, even a 'saving power to beauty,' the Helen of the second part of Faust' dissolves as a phantom into air,* and the union between Helen and Faust-i.e. the union of Greek and Germanic culture-resolves itself into a phantasmagorial vision. So the recovery of the typical modern man, as of Faust (Goethe seems to imply), must be brought about in some other way; not according to the Neopagan view, by the redemptive power of beauty, but by the redemptive power of love-Divine love, that is, in the Christian sense of the word. True, Goethe wavers between the two points of view, but his final pronouncement in the conversations with Eckermann leaves no doubt on the subject. Quoting the following lines as the key to Faust's redemption,'

he continued :

6

The noble Spirit is now free,
And saved from evil scheming:
Whoe'er aspires unweariedly
Is not beyond redeeming ;
And if he feels the grace of Love,
That from on high is given,
The blessed hosts that wait above
Shall welcome him to heaven!'

This is quite in harmony with our religious views, according to which it is not through our own effort that we obtain salvation, but through Divine grace added. . . In Faust himself we have an ever higher and purer activity to the end, and Eternal Love coming to his assistance from above.'

In the 'Faust,' too, as in Job, we have a partial solution of the final question whether here or hereafter is the true goal of life. There are indeed passages which suggest the idea that Goethe Delieved in the promise for this life only; such as when in the first part Faust says to Mephistopheles :

The There my scruples nought increases.
When thou hast dashed this world to pieces,

*

Here on this earth my pleasures have their sources.'

* In a letter to Zetter, written in 1827, Goethe calls Helena 'ein fünfzigjähriges Gespenst.' It occupied him at intervals from 1778-1827, and both Schiller and Goethe in their correspondence in 1800 speak of Helena as 'Gipfel des Ganzen,' i.e. the whole second part of 'Faust.'

or

or the following, towards the close of the second part :

Firm let him stand, and look around him well!

This world means something to the capable!'

There are, however, many other passages—but more particularly in the concluding scene, when the angels carry away 'Faustens Unsterbliches'—which establish the opposite theory. We will only quote the one before the Easter morning scene:—

'A new day beckons to a newer shore!'

Was Goethe undecided, then, or neutral in this important question? Was his belief in immortality a vague perhaps,' or did he seek refuge in some kind of Swedenborgian mysticism, as an adverse though able critic of the Roman Catholic communion suggests? Fortunately Goethe has left a record of his opinion on the subject which settles the point. In 1829—that is, three years before his death-he said to Eckermann :—

'Man must believe in immortality . . . the conviction of our continued existence comes from the idea of activity. For if I continue to work without intermission till the end comes, Nature is bound to assign to me another form of existence if the present can no longer contain my spirit.'

And what, it may be asked, is the plank thrown across the chasm between the two worlds? By what bridge do mortals pass from the seen to the unseen universe, according to Goethe? Here, again, there are numberless passages in his writings to show how closely he approached, as he does in the climax of the Faust tragedy, to the Christian standpoint. Like one of his own English admirers, in whom, too, a tendency to intellectual scepticism could not eradicate entirely Christian modes of thought, Goethe indicates what Matthew Arnold has happily called the method and the secret of Jesus,' i.e. repentance and the inner process of religious regeneration. Those of our readers whom this statement may take by surprise may see a number of passages collected by Dr. Ernst Melzer in his pamphlet entitled 'Goethes Ethische Ansichten (Neisse, 1890), or in Dr. Vogel's 'Goethes Selbstzeugnisse über seine Stellung zur Religion' (Leipzig, 1888), to bear out this assertion, though we have no room here to quote them in full. But one of them may be made use of for this purpose, which in part is quoted by Matthew Arnold without the sequel, which

only

only exists in manuscript, and does not appear in the collected work :

'Die and re-exist

Or else thou art

A gloomy guest

On this dark earth.

'Long since have I striven;
At last have I yielded :
When the old man dissolves,

The new man arises.'

Here then, again, as in the dénouement of Job, we note a yearning after a return to some kind of faith in God's moral government of the world, to something resembling the authoritative foundations of belief, resting on a somewhat broader basis than the foundation truths' of the vulgar. In Goethe's Faust,' then, as a reflection of the mental struggles of its author, we have a gallant attempt to reconcile science with faith, culture with religion, practical views of life with the principles of Christian eschatology. Here at the close of his life, completing the work begun in his youth, almost prophetically the poet expresses the yearning of the nineteenth century, at the moment of its expiration, to find its way back to the buoyant hopes and firm convictions of the ages of faith, and this without sacrificing truth or committing intellectual suicide. In short, Goethe's 'Faust,' his alter ego, the most complete and the most reliable history of his own experiences and intellectual vicissitudes, culminates in the idea which is fast becoming the ruling idea of the most thoughtful men of our day, whatever their mental prepossessions otherwise may be, that 'science and faith are not intended to exclude, but to form the complement of, each other.'

ART.

ART. X.-The Transvaal Trouble; how it arose. By John Martineau. London, 1896.

THE

HE termination of the Trial at Bar marked the close of what we may call the first chapter in the Boer-Uitlander controversy. The Report of the South African Committee of Enquiry marks the close of the second chapter. During the former period public attention was mainly concentrated on the Jameson Raid. During the latter period public interest has been principally concentrated on the issue whether the BoerUitlander controversy, of which the Raid was merely a side incident, might not necessitate the direct intervention of Great Britain in the affairs of South Africa. It is this issue which chiefly concerns us at the present moment; and we propose in this article only to deal with the Raid in as far as it bears, for good or for bad, on the relations between the British Empire and the South African Republic.

The result of the trial which ended in the conviction of Dr. Jameson and his fellow-prisoners was received in this country with acquiescence, if not with approval. No doubt public opinion hesitated to endorse the extreme view taken by the Lord Chief Justice of the legal interpretation of the Foreign Enlistment Act. No doubt, too, popular sentiment would have preferred the infliction of a more lenient sentence. This sentiment, however, was satisfied when the action of the Home Office modified the punishment awarded to the prisoners to that assigned to first-class misdemeanants. The general verdict of the country may be said to have been to the effect that a grave offence had been committed against the laws of England as well as against a friendly State; that the offenders, whatever their motives may have been, deserved punishment; and that the punishment inflicted, even if somewhat excessive, was necessary in order to make amends for the outrage of which the South African Republic had just cause to complain. England, it was considered, had fully discharged a painful duty, and, having so discharged it, had a right to expect that the Transvaal would redress the grievances forming the sole excuse for the rash attempt, of which the prisoners at Holloway had been at once the leaders and the victims. The above may fairly be said to have been the opinion of the Man in the Street a year ago; it cannot truly be said to be quite his opinion to-day. It is, we think, worth while to indicate the causes which have led to this change of sentiment.

The prisoners convicted at the Trial at Bar practically offered no defence. Assuming the view of the law taken by the Judges · Vol. 186.-No. 371.

R

to

to be correct, there could be no question as to their legal guilt, and-contrary, as we believe, to the advice of their counsel-no attempt was made by them to extenuate the moral gravity of the offence of which they stood charged. This conduct was only consistent with the extraordinary loyalty all the parties to the Raid have displayed towards each other. The defence which most of the prisoners could have set up might to some extent have told against the others; but in the long run it might have been better if the whole facts had been made known at the time.

His

The War Office, shortly after the Trial at Bar, informed the convicted officers that they must send in their resignations. We fail to see how any other decision could have been come to, especially after the language employed by the Lord Chief Justice in his summing up and in passing sentence. Lordship went out of his way to express his opinion that the prisoners had been guilty of a criminal offence in taking part in the Raid; and unless the military authorities were prepared to dispute the verdict and the sentence of the Court, they could hardly allow officers who had been convicted of, and were suffering imprisonment for, a criminal offence, to retain their commissions in Her Majesty's service. This decision, however, gave great umbrage to the officers and their friends. Sir John Willoughby, who had been the military commander of the Raid, felt it his duty to write to the War Office protesting against the justice of this virtual dismissal from the service, on the ground that his brother officers had been given to understand that in invading the territory of the South African Republic they were acting with the approval, or at any rate with the cognizance, of Her Majesty's Government.

If Sir John Willoughby's statement had been capable of being confirmed by legal evidence, his demand that the dismissed officers ought by right to be re-instated in their military rank, would have been unanswerable. The officers in question had been, to use the technical expression, 'seconded' for service in the forces of the Chartered Company. If, as laymen, we may express an opinion on a military matter, the practice of secondment seems to us as objectionable as the word itself is ungrammatical. In virtue of this practice a British officer is permitted, subject to the approval of the War Office, to take service in a force not under the direct control of the Queen or of the Commander-in-Chief, and yet to retain his rank in the Queen's service, and to return to that service, holding the same position as he would have held if he had remained with his regiment. We quite admit that the system

of