He lays a ray of light under every fact, and between
himself and his dearest property. From him nothing was hid, nothing
withholden. The lurking daemons sat to him, and the saint who saw the
daemons; and the metaphysical elements took form. "Piety itself is no
aim, but only a means whereby, through purest inward peace, we may
attain to highest culture." And his penetration of every secret of the
fine arts will make Goethe still more statuesque. His affections help
him, like women employed by Cicero to worm out the secret of
conspirators. Enmities he has none. Enemy of him you may be,--if so
you shall teach him aught which your good-will cannot,--were it only
what experience will accrue from your ruin. Enemy and welcome, but
enemy on high terms. He cannot hate anybody; his time is worth too
much. Temperamental antagonisms may be suffered, but like feuds of
emperors, who fight dignifiedly across kingdoms.
His autobiography, under the title of "Poetry and Truth Out of My
Life," is the expression of the idea,--now familiar to the world through
the German mind, but a novelty to England, Old and New, when that book
appeared,--that a man exists for culture; not for what he can
accomplish, but for what can be accomplished in him.
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