He will realize what you say. He hates to be trifled
with, and to be made to say over again some old wife's fable, that has
had possession of men's faith these thousand years. He may as well see
if it is true as another. He sifts it. I am here, he would say, to be
the measure and judge of these things. Why should I take them on trust?
And, therefore, what he says of religion, of passion, of marriage, of
manners, property, of paper money, of periods or beliefs, of omens,
of luck, or whatever else, refuses to be forgotten.
Take the most remarkable example that could occur of this tendency to
verify every term in popular use. The Devil had played an important
part in mythology in all times. Goethe would have no word that does
not cover a thing. The same measure will still serve: "I have never
heard of any crime which I might not have committed." So he flies at
the throat of this imp. He shall be real; he shall be modern; he shall
be European; he shall dress like a gentleman, and accept the manner,
and walk in the streets, and be well initiated in the life of Vienna,
and of Heidelberg, in 1820,--or he shall not exist.
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