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Untitled Article
ested in these matters to be able to follow the orator . But one branch of this subject has too general an interest to permit our passing it over altogether . As our previous extracts afford some glimpses of the state of his mind on religious subjects , so we are desirous of suppl ying a corroboration to what we have formerl y remarked on Goethe ' s political character . Two short extracts will suffice .
e Goethe has often been reproached with taking little interest in the political forms of his country ; with having failed to raise his voice in moments of the greatest political excitement ; and with having even , on several occasions , showed himself disinclined to liberal opinions . It certainly lay not in his nature to strive after a political activity , the primary conditions of which were incompatible with the sphere of exist *
ence he had made his own , and the consequences of which were not within his ken . From his elevated point of view , history appeared to him nothing more than a record of an eternally repeated , —nay , ncccs . sary conflict between the follies and passions of men , and the nobler interests of civilization : he knew too well the dangers , or , at Jeast , the very problematical results , of uncalled-for interference : he would not suffer the pure element of his thoughts and works to be troubled by the
confused and tumultuous incidents of the day : —still less would lie permit himself to be made the mouth-piece of a party , in spite of Gall ' s declaration that the organ of popular oratory was singularly developed in his head It was his persuasion that much less could be clone for man from without than from within ; and that an honest and vigorous will could make to itself a path , and employ its activity to advantage , under every form of civil society Actuated by this persuasion , he held fast to order and obedience to law , as the main pillars of the public weal . Whatever threatened to retard or to trouble the progress of
moral and intellectual improvement , and the methodical application and employment of the powers of Nature , or to abandon all that is best and highest in existence to the wild freaks of unbridled passion and the domination of rude and violent men , was to him the true tyranny , the mortal foe of freedom , the utterly insufferable evil . '—vol . ii . p .
283—2 Sb - k When his mind was filled with any great thought , or any new work , he would sometimes refuse to ^ hear a word read from newspapers or public prints . ' " It sometimes strikes one , " he writes to Zclter , " that one knows as much of the past as one ' s neighbour , and that the knowledge of what the day brings forth makes one neither the wiser nor the better . This
is of great importance ; for if we consider it attentively , it is mere pedantry ( philisterey ) in private persons to bestow bo much of their interest upon affairs over which they have no control . And then , too , I may say in your ear , that I am so happy in my old age as to have thoughts arise within me which it were worth living over again to bring to
maturity and action . Therefore we , as long as it is day , will not busy ourselves with allotria . " On another occasion he writes to a young friend : — k < It is perfectly indifferent within what circle an honest man acts , provided he do but know how thoroughly to understand , and completely to fill out , that circle . But when a man has no power of acting , lie ought not to bestow any great solicitude \ nor presumptuously to
Untitled Article
184 Characteristics of Goethe .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1834, page 184, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2631/page/24/
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