Moral Tendency of Goethe's Writings [pp. 180-188]

Moral Tendency of Goethe's ~ritiiigs.
dictate, cannot surely be the highest purposes of Art. Yet these seem to be the
ends and aims of the first part of Faust,
the crowning glory of the poet. To all
who believe that religion is necessary to
the welfare of society, that its moral restraints are indispensable motives of conduct, and that its heavenly precepts are
essential in the culture of the heart, it
must be cause of regret that such wealth
of intellect should be lavished to paint,
with a pencil, dipt in the tints of the
rainbow, the condition of the skeptical
mind, while the cause of God and immortality remained unsung. The mental perplexities which pressed on Faust
are not explained; the poisoned acidity
of Mephistophiles is not neutralized.
For twenty-five years the poem had no
sequel, and the public were left to infer
that in Goethe's views of the Universe,
uncertainty and cynicism were immutable laws of being. When the sequel
came, in the last year of his life, this
tardy apology for impiety amounted tonothing.
It was said, perhaps by Dryden, of
Cudworth, that he had stated the reasonings of the atheists so strongly that many
of his readers would consider them more
conclusive than their refutation. This
" dread Power
Whose gracious favor is the primeval source
Of all illumination, may my life
Express the image of a better time,
More w i s e desires an d s imp ler man ner s nurse
My heartin genuine freedom. All pure thoughts
Be with me; so shall thy unfailing love
Guide and support and cheer me to the end."
animadversion which was scarcely true,
when applied to the intellectual system,
has great weight in reference to Faust.
Goethe gener ally gi ves his doubting
scholar a nd mocking fiend the b est of the
argument, and imposes on th e reader the
task of vigorous mental exertion to sheave
off the hideous night-mare of doubt -;nd
delusion. Schlegel's judgment is undoubtedly correct. "In respect to this
mode of thinking, as he applied it to the
concerns of life, he deserves the appellation of the German Voltaire. A German
he is in everything, and even his mockeries, ironies and unbelief are expressed
with a tone of seriousness and eloquence
to which the French Voltaire was a
stranger." True, but alas! that mockeries, ironies and unbelief should be expressed at all.
How different, and how much more
sublime was Milton's conception of the
duties of the Muse. " By labor and in
It thus appear ththat the two gre ates t
poets of Engl and were not afraid that
the recognition of a perso nal Go d wo uld
be a deviation from artistic propriet y.
Byro n dedicated his Wern e r to Goethe,
but Werner i s heavy as lead without one
spark of gen ius; h e sh ould have selected some work more expressive of the
similarities between h imself and the auth or of Faust. Both, too often, had Mephistophiles at the ir elbows; both, too
often, uttere d bl asp hemy in beautiful
verse and raised their tin y discords amid
the grand ha rmonies of nature and Providence.
Speaking of Faust, in one of his lectures, Dr. Follen said:
" In the only instance in which the desire of man after godlike perfection, the
independence and infinity of his moral
nature, is represented as the original
spring of action in a work of this author,
it fails of its high destination; it leads
man to a fall from a state of childlike
innocence, instead of raising him above
it to conscious triumphant virtue."
1856.]
185
tent study, which I take to be my portion in this life, joined to the strong propeiasity of nature, I might perhaps leave
something so written to after times as
they would -not willingly let die, a work
not to be raised from the heat of youth
or the vapors of wine, like that which
flows at waste from the pen of some i-ulgar amorist, nor to be obtained by the
invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout priler to
That -Eternal S' it who can enrich with
all utterance and knowledge, and sends out
his sera.phim with the hallowedfire of his
altar to touc7i and pury the lips of whont,
he pleases."
Not less sublime is Wordsworth's invocation of the Supreme Being to assist his
Muse.