PENGUIN @CcLAssics

JOHANN WOLFGANG © VON GOETHE

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

)

ARL LLL iS

A

PENGUIN CLASSICS

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1749. He studied law in Leipzig and in Strasbourg, where Herder introduced him to Shakespeare and to folk song. Under his influence he produced some of the most famous poems in the German language, and at twenty-four wrote Gétz von Berlichingen, a play which brought him national fame and established him at the forefront of the ‘Storm and Stress’ movement. Werther, a tragic novel of unfulfilled love, was an even greater success. Goethe began work on Faust and on Egmont, another tragedy, before being invited for a brief stay with an admirer, the Grand Duke of Weimar. It was in Weimar, however, that he was to spend most of his life, much of it in government service. Frustrations and an interest in the classical world led him to leave suddenly for Italy in 1786, and the two-year absence that followed saw the beginnings of the dramas Iphigenie on Tauris and Torquato Tasso, while Italian Journey recounts his wealth of experiences in the country. Back in Weimar, friendship with Schiller was to prove another source of inspiration, and a steady stream of publications was to flow until his death. The most notable‘of Goethe’s later achievements were the two volumes of Wilhem Meister and the ambiguous Elective Affinities, and, in drama, the second part of Faust. Besides his writing Goethe directed the State Theatre and worked on numerous aspects of natural science. He married his long-standing mistress in 1806 and died in 1832, soon after completing Faust.

ELISABETH STOPP was born in 1911 and died in 1996, shortly after completing her translation of Goethe’s maxims. She taught in Cambridge for many years, writing extensively on medieval French saints as well as numerous aspects of German literature. Her principal publications include Madame de Chantal, Portrait of a Saint, German Romantics in Context and a translation of letters by Francois de Sales.

PETER HUTCHINSON lectures in German at Cambridge, where he is Fellow and Librarian of Trinity Hall. He has worked widely as an editor of German texts and his publications include Games Authors Play and Stefan Heym: The Perpetual Dissident.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Maxims and Reflections

Translated by ELISABETH STOPP

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by PETER HUTCHINSON

PENGUIN BOOKS

In memory of Frederick J. Stopp MBE the royalties from this volume will benefit The Royal Star & Garter Home for Disabled Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen.

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London w8 51z, England Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182—190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

Published in Penguin Books 1998

2

Set in 10/12.5 pt PostScript Monotype Bembo Typeset by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

Contents

Preface vil Introduction ix Further Reading xvii A Note on the Text xix

Maxims and Reflections

FROM ELECTIVE AFFINITIES (1809) From Ottilie’s Diary 3

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

Vol. I, issue 3: Naivety and Humour (1818) 8 Vol. II, issue 3: Matters of Serious Moment (1820) 9 Vol. III, issue 1: Own and Adopted Ideas in

Proverbial Formulation (1821) IO Vol. IV, issue 2: Own and Assimilated

Material (1823) 19 Vol. V, issue 1: Individual Points (1824) 26 Vol. V, issue 2: Individual Points (1825) 29 Vol. V, issue 3: Individual Points (1826) 34 Vol. VI, issue 1: [untitled] (1827) 45

PROM THE PERIODICAL ISSUES ON MORPHOLOGY Vol. I, issue 4: [untitled] (1822) 47

CONTENTS

FROM THE PERIODICAL S TE: ON THE NATURAL SCIENGES Vol. II, issue 1: Old Ideas, Almost out of Date

(1823) $2

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS (1829) Thoughts about Art, Ethics and Nature in

the Spirit of the Travellers 57 From Makarie’s Archive 82 POSTHUMOUS On Literature and Life 108 On Art and Art History: Aphorisms for the

Attention of Friends and Opponents 136 On Nature and Natural Science 144 Sketchy, Doubtful, Incomplete Jottings 166 Addenda from the Posthumous Papers 178 Notes 180

Preface

The late Elisabeth Stopp was equally at home in the fields of literature, theology and translation. Her many articles on the German Romantics were rewarded with the Eichendorff Medal of the Eichendorff- Gesellschaft, the highest honour in this field, while her book on the French Jeanne de Chantal earned her a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature. She was at her strongest in combining literary and linguistic analysis, and translation — from German, French and Latin — was thus her forte. Her aim was not simply perfect sense, but tone and rhythm which would match the original.

Goethe was one of Elisabeth’s favourite authors, and her fascination with his way of creating, together with her thorough knowledge of all aspects of his life and work, allowed her to translate confidently the entire collection of his maxims and reflections. She worked on these sporadically for over ten years, and had completed the translation and some of the notes shortly before her death on 4 November 1996. Although she had made a large collection of jottings on what others had written about the maxims, Elisabeth could not bring herself to shape these into an introduction. In retrospect the reason for this is clear: she saw the present work as her last great literary endeavour, and to complete it would have signalled the end of her scholarship. This was not something she could face with equanimity.

I] promised Elisabeth that I would ensure the manuscript reached print, and I have therefore finalized the preparation for print, written the Introduction, Further Reading and Note on the Text to the present volume, and prepared the Notes. I have also made small changes to some of the translations. In all other respects the work is hers.

PH.

vii

Introduction

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany’s greatest writer and one of the last of those great ‘Universal Men’ who had stalked Europe since the Renaissance, was born in Frankfurt am Main on 28 August 1749. His life was rich, hectic and long, and his contribution to science was, in his own eyes, almost as important as his achievements in literature. For Goethe was an anatomist and geologist as well as a composer of masterpieces in every literary genre. He was a botanist and a thinker as well as a critic and a translator. He was, in addition, a fine pictorial artist and theatre director as well as being an out- standing administrator and Privy Councillor. He has been claimed as the greatest German mind that has ever lived, and although much of his scientific writing was not taken seriously by his contemporaries or his successors, his literary shadow fell starkly over every writer to follow him. His death in 1832 ended what was to become known as the ‘Age of Goethe’.

Goethe’s maxims represent a small part of a massive output. They are remarkably varied not simply because they gestated over many years and because their author was so versatile, but also because Goethe was so receptive to cultures outside his own. He drew inspiration from an and composition which he adopts in the maxims, one would point especially to the Bible and to the Classics (the terse, balanced statements of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament, the epigrams of Martial and of Linnaeus, the aphorisms of Hippocrates). He was also a reader of other writers of aphorisms and of those with a particularly concise style, such as Montaigne, Pascal and La Rochefoucauld, not to mention the greatest aphorist of the German language, his compatriot

1X

INTRODUCTION

Lichtenberg. Yet there were many other books and individuals who influenced his approach, including, at various stages, the Koran, Chinese poetry, Persian poetry and Laurence Sterne.

Born into a wealthy and prestigious family, Goethe enjoyed a strongly supportive background and a privileged education. He was precocious and self-confident, and his early compositions were in a variety of languages, including English. Aged sixteen he began to study law in Leipzig, and then, after an illness, in Strasbourg. It was here that he fell deeply in love, one of many emotional attachments throughout his life which were to inspire some of his greatest poetry, and where he met the thinker and critic Herder, who was to change his conception of German culture and encourage him to break firmly with the Germans’ preference for French literary models. Study played only a relatively small part in Goethe’s eventful life of this time, but part of his experience here would be exposure to the maxim form as a means of teaching both law and the sciences in the easily memorable mode of brief, pithy statements. i

After completing his studies and obtaining his doctorate (having dabbled in various other subjects, including literature, drawing, chemis- try and anatomy), Goethe returned to Frankfurt, where he was soon to write the two works for which he remained most famous throughout his life: Götz von Berlichingen (1771, revised 1773), one of the first and mostimportant documents of the German ‘Storm and Stress’ movement, and The Sufferings of Young Werther (1774), a novel written very much from the heart and which rapidly achieved international fame. The success of the latter drew an invitation from Prince Karl August, Duke of Weimar, to join him at the Weimar court, and after an initial period of occasionally rather irresponsible behaviour with the young Duke (who was aged only eighteen), Goethe started to become far more than simply a writer in residence, famous for radical literary experiment. Much to the initial opposition of the court, he began to devote himself increasingly to the management of the Duke’s affairs, proving himself conscientious and effective, and eventually winning considerable trust. A strong, emotional, but as far as we can tell, platonic, relationship with Charlotte von Stein, wife of the Duke’s Master of Horse, a woman

INTRODUCTION

seven years his senior, was to prove decisive in shaping a more settled and responsible attitude to life. Goethe was to spend most of the rest of his life in Weimar, and, over the years, involved himself in the improvement of the Duchy in areas as diverse as mining, road building and irrigation. He also found the time to pursue a variety of scientific studies, in anatomy, botany, geology and optics.

Possibly because he felt trapped by the many obligations created by his position, possibly because he felt ensnared by his relationship with Frau von Stein, and possibly because he felt full literary inspiration was no longer to be found in Weimar, Goethe secretly planned a trip to Rome. He departed in 1786 and was to travel in Italy for almost two years. The experience revitalized his literary activities, and he returned to Weimar a different man. It was at this stage that a far greater maturity of formulation entered his writing and that he began to make regular jottings which were to form the basis of later maxims. A second visit to Italy, in 1790, undertaken in a very different frame of mind, was to prove a disappointment to him, although it was to inspire verse epigrams, the best of which show that successful wrestling with form which is often characteristic of the maxims themselves (the Venetian Epigrams, a selection of which was first pubiished in 1791).

Although Goethe returned refreshed from his Italian journeys, non- literary activity was soon to engulf him once more, and the period after the second Italian visit is often regarded as one of unease and isolation. Friendship with the younger dramatist and historian Schiller proved a source of comfort and inspiration, and although the latter’s death in 1805 was a severe emotional blow, two great works were to follow in the years thereafter: the first part of Faust (1808), on which he had been working sporadically for over thirty years, and then his novel Elective Affinities (1809), which contained the first selection of his maxims. Works of his later years came more slowly, but love was to inspire further major achievements in poetry, while the fruits of his reflection were increasingly made public in periodicals and in his final novel, Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years (1821, 1829). At his death in 1832, Goethe was planning the publication ofa collection of maxims; thanks to the tireless work of his secretary (and literary executor) Eckermann, some 600 of these appeared in 1833 under the title Einzelheiten. Maximen

xi

INTRODUCTION

und Reflexionen (Individual Items. Maxims and Reflections), while a much fuller collection, also under the aegis of Eckermann, appeared in 1840 under the general title Spriiche in Prosa (Sayings in Prose). This formulation was to be rejected at a later stage by Max Hecker who, in 1907, used the phrase Goethe himself had given the largest folder of his maxims in 1822: ‘Maximen und Reflexionen’. The author would probably not have objected to such a dignified title for an ultimately complete collection of his maxims, although he had regularly used other terms, labelling one folder of miscellaneous scraps of paper ‘Spane’ (‘shavings’) and another “Gnomen’ (‘gnomes’). The only ones for which he consist- ently used the term ‘aphorisms’ are nos: 1064—96.

The bulk of the maxims were composed after 1800, but throughout his life — and especially after the journey to Italy — Goethe had the habit

of jotting down, often on whatever scrap of paper was available, any~

thought that seemed to him worthy of structured formulation. From

time to time, over the years, a secretary would make a fair copy of these (sometimes casual) thoughts so that the author could survey them

and consider how they might be used in the context of other work

een erent ee nee which was in progress at the time. As a result, some of Goethe’s ideas on art and related subjects appeared in periodicals he himself published

(On Art and Antiquity, 1818—27); ideas of a scientific nature appeared

in his journals on morphology (Periodical Issues on Morphology, 1822) and on the Natural Sciences in general (Periodical Issues on the Natural Sciences, 1823); while insights of a more general nature found a place in the context of his fiction where, it is true, their relevance was not always apparent (as ‘diary entries’ by one of the central characters in Elective Affinities, and as wise remarks taken mainly from ‘Makarie’s Archive’ in Wilhelm Meister). In periodicals and novels, therefore, more than half of Goethe’s available supply of ‘Maxims and Reflections’ appeared in his lifetime (798 out of 1413).

Goethe probably regarded his reflections as miniature creative lan- guage events to be shared with his readers, reflecting the time- and life-sequence of his personal reactions. He did not see them as a specific collection of aphorisms, nor as anything as planned and as formal as the biblical Wisdom books; nor did he wish to see them presented under

INTRODUCTION

specific headings which would enable swift reference to his opinions on a variety of matters (a task readily undertaken by later compilers). Maxims and Reflections is thus best regarded as something of a Goethe ‘reader’, not as a repository for learned information or profound thought but, in the main, for the pleasure that can be taken in a carefully crafted formulation that is sometimes akin to poetry in its diction and rhythm. It is significant that Goethe’s letters and his conversation are often comparable to the ‘maxim and reflection’ form, and this may be one reason why he took the trouble to structure and formulate his passing thoughts, to set them down in formalized shape for posterity. Quickly scribbling down ideas was actually a process in which Goethe had engaged since youth, when, as the creative impulse came, he would immediately commit his thoughts to paper, not hesitating to spring out of bed to do so. He could not postpone the artistic process, nor, in fact, could he anticipate it. He knew that when inspiration came it must be seized — it would otherwise be lost. And so maxims were created on the back of theatre programmes, visiting cards, on his own literary drafts, and even on bills. There are, however, disadvantages to seizing the moment in such a way, and they are commonly overlooked by those critics who are eager to see the mark of genius or of wisdom in all that the Great Man wrote: given the manner in which some of the maxims were composed, it is hardly surprising that not all of them are good ones; some are tedious; and some are actually borrowed from others. But the advantages of this method of composition are equally

clear: by reacting creatively to so many events and situations — in his reading, his personal encounters, his daily work in the offices of the

Weimar court and its administration, his scientific work and the corres-

pondence that went with it — the enthusiasm of the thinker is regularly reserved and the writer provides a complete personal record of his views on such diverse issues as life and art, books and people, truth and In the maxims, we see not simply ideas, but, above all, the effort to structure the idea. The principle of creating form was one which Goethe elevated above all others. It recurs in a number of the maxims, but is

put most forcefully in a letter to one of his closest friends, the musician and composer Zelter:

xiii

INTRODUCTION

No one is prepared to grasp that, both in nature and in art, the sole and supreme

process is to create form and structure. (30 October 1808)

Goethe had to formulate his ideas on the spot, as it were, and one by one, in sequence, in an ordered structure of words. One has the impression that he grappled with an idea in its prose formulation much in the way he would work to set the right form for a poem, a couplet in one of his verse dramas, or a rhymed apophthegm — and that this was for him a satisfying, indeed a necessary, way of giving an immediate outward aspect to what was going on in his mind at the time, more particularly in response to some reading, some personal encounter, some visual or emotional reaction or experience. Some maxims are clearly the product of such a single moment, while others have been shaped over a period of time. The form adopted is constantly changing. Some are short statements of apparently artless simplicity. Others consist of a short statement and the idea which arises from it. Some develop a point over several sentences. Some are questions; some are short dia- logues; some state a point, some argue it, others demonstrate it. Most are positive, while a small number are negative. Goethe will move from a single terse clause to a succession of complex sentences. He will move from solemnity to wit. Yet all the maxims share one aim: to provoke reflection.

Goethe used a variety of words to refer to his writings in short form, but ‘maxims’ was one of the most common. He would seem to have understood by the term a general truth as he personally saw it and

“wanted to communicate in crisp formulation; a ‘reflection’ was quite simply a rather more developed ‘maxim’. Probably because his ideas had such a strongly personal context, Goethe tended to avoid the term ‘aphorism’, which, as R. J. Hollingdale has suggested in the Introduction to his Penguin collection of Lichtenberg’s aphorisms, may be seen as distinguished by four qualities occurring together: it is brief, it is isolated, it is witty, and it is ‘philosophical’ (p. 9). Goethe’s maxims only occasionally fulfil these criteria. They are not always brief, and they are often in a sequence rather than being isolated. Wit, one feels, is far less important to Goethe than veracity. Nor was he trying to solve intellectual problems or to make clever points. He did not see himself

INTRODUCTION

writing in the manner of Lichtenberg (whom he had met and whose work he admired), nor in that of the French seventeenth-century aphorists, such as La Rochefoucauld and Pascal, even though later critics have tended to place him in this tradition. His thinking and his subsequent formulation were always personal, independent and clear. Elements of paradox and ambiguity, which some have also claimed for the true aphorism, are rarely to be found here. Maxim 81 illustrates clearly what might be seen as a working principle:

Surely the world is quite full enough of riddles for us not to need to turn the

simplest phenomena into riddles too?

Yet Goethe did, at the same time, want to preserve a certain (Elitist) status for his thinking. In one of the two entries which actually refer to the business of writing maxims, he suggests (in no. 1068):

The obscurity of certain maxims is only relative: it doesn’t do to make everything

that is obvious to a practitioner crystal-clear to a listener.

Generalization on the maxims is difficult, because a loosely ordered sequence of disparate ideas, produced in reaction to a wide range of events, obviously resists broad analysis. Even deciding on the different groups into which the maxims can be placed is problematic, and Goethe himself is of limited assistance here. In one of his final conversations with his secretary Eckermann, the discussion turned to the ‘Maximen und Reflexionen’ in Wilhelm Meister (conversation of 29 May 1831). Eckermann here recalls the way in which maxims had been introduced into the novel, which Goethe had earlier been revising for a new edition of his works. The author had expected the final product to take up three volumes, but when the printers pointed out that he had miscalculated and more material was needed, Goethe simply requested Eckermann to make up the necessary space out of two bundles of maxims which had not yet been published, while he himself added two recently composed poems. In the same conversation Goethe expressed the wish that poems and maxims be removed from later editions of Wilhelm Meister, and that at some point in the future the maxims as a whole be published in three groups relating to ‘Art’, ‘Natural Sciences in General’ and ‘Literature and Ethics’. In view of the breadth of such

INTRODUCTION

categories, it is not surprising that later editors have seen fit to introduce further divisions. There have been careful, reasoned attempts not only to present the maxims in categories, themes and logical connections, but also to follow what has been seen as Goethe’s circular and symbolical thinking. The resultant groupings are indeed very useful as an indication to the reader of the main areas of Goethe’s thought, but such collections are unrepresentative of the process and of the unsystematic nature of Goethe’s loose, day-by-day thoughts. Such editors presuppose that presentation should be by subject, but there is obviously a strong body of opinion which holds that chronology (in as far as this can be reasonably determined) is a more legitimate way of proceeding. This is, in fact, the principle adopted in the present version.

FURTHER READING

Literature. A Study in Aesthetic. Transformation (Peter Lang, Berne, Frank- furt, New York, 1983) surveys Goethe’s Wisdom literature as a whole; the most relevant parts of this are reproduced in the Introduction to his Selection mentioned above. Stephenson is especially helpful in analysing what he calls the ‘rhetorical form’ of the maxims and in discussing their content. There is a good Introduction and detailed commentary on individual maxims in the ‘Miinchener Ausgabe’ of Goethe’s works, vol. 17, edited Gonthier-Louis Fink et al. (Carl Hanser, Munich, 1991), while the ‘Frankfurter Ausgabe’, edited by Harald Fricke (Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1993) contains the most exhaustive commentary yet published.

xviii

A Note on the Text

Since Goethe himself did not oversee the publication of his maxims as a separate volume, there has been much dispute over what precisely should be included in such a collection and in what order it should appear. The maxims featured in this volume first appeared scattered throughout the sixty-volume edition of Goethe’s complete works edited by Eckermann and Riemer (Stuttgart, 1827—30; 1832—42), while later nineteenth-century editions adopted a variety of procedures for classify- ing them. In 1907 Max Hecker published them as a complete sequence, the first part of his volume being devoted to those published in Goethe’s lifetime, arranged chronologically by date of publication, and the second to those which were among his unpublished papers. Paul Stécklein followed this arrangement for the relevant volume of the “Gedenkaus- gabe’ (Ziirich, 1949), which has been made widely available in paperback by the Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (Munich, 1963). The text in the popular Goethe ‘Hamburger Ausgabe’ (C. H. Beck, Munich, vol. 12, originally edited by H. J. Schrimpf in 1953, but with critical apparatus regularly revised) operated by grouping the maxims into eight different subject areas, and more recent editions have also chosen to deviate from Hecker’s arrangement (the ‘Miinchener Ausgabe’ and the ‘Frankfurter Ausgabe’, both mentioned above in ‘Further Reading’). There have been recent reprints (with minor corrections) of Hecker’s version, the latest being edited by Irmtraut Schmidt, with an introduction by Walther Killy (C. H. Beck, Munich, 1989).

Familiarity with the collection as a whole confirms the value of presenting the text in the traditional way thought out by Hecker on the basis of the manuscripts and of a judicious appraisal of the original editors, who had been, after all, in close touch with Goethe himself

Xix

A NOTE ON THE TEXT

and who respected his own, personal ordering of certain well-detined groups — especially those in An and Antiquity and in the two novels. The order in which the various sections are presented is less important than the order of the maxims within each individual group: there is often a sequence of thought, the development of an argument from one maxim to the next, and this is destroyed by grouping the items by subject. In addition, though, there is often the problem of deciding into which group certain items should be placed. It would, of course, be possible, and it has in fact been done (e.g. by Fink and Fricke), to add further items to the collection — from a variety of Goethe’s other literary and non-literary works. But one can argue that the process need not end there, for Goethe’s conversations, and also his letters, are thronged with possible candidates tor inclusion. Goethe himself actually drew some of the maxims from these sources, and the process could easily be extended.

Goethe occasionally also borrowed from others, although he was not consistent in providing quotation marks to identify other people’s words — indeed, he was once accused of plagiarism for failing to do so. However, not all of his sources are known. (Those that have been idenufied are mentioned in the Notes.)

The present translation was begun before the editions of Fink and Fricke had reached print, and although it is possible that the latter’s will come to be recognized as definitive. justification for following the original Hecker presentation can comfortably be made; apart from the grounds outlined above, this text has acquired canonical status, its numbering is acknowledged. even if not followed, in all collections, and it is readily available in German paperback for those who wish to compare translation and onginal.

xX

Maxims and Reflections

FROM ELECTIVE AFFINITIES,(1809) From Ottilie’s Diary 1. We enjoy looking into the future because, by our secret longings, we so much want to bring about a favourable realization of the vague possibilities that move to and fro in that realm. 2. It is not easy for us to be in the company of many people without thinking that chance, having brought together so many, should also

bring us our friends.

3. However secluded our life, sooner or later and without realizing it, we will find ourselves in debt or in credit.

“4. If we meet someone who owes us thanks, it will immediately occur to us. How often we can meet someone where the debt is on our side,

and we do not give it a thought!

5. To communicate is natural; to accept what is communicated is an acquired art.

6. No one would talk much in company if he realized how often he himself misunderstands others.

7. The reason, maybe, for our altered account of what others have said is our own failure to understand them.

8. Anyone who holds forth at length and without flattering his listeners will court dislike.

9. Every spoken word evokes its contrary meaning.

10. Contradiction and flattery both make for poor conversation.

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

11. The most congenial social occasions are those ruled by cheerful deference of each for all.

12. The clearest indication of character is what people find laughable. 13. What is laughable results from a moral contrast which has been put

across for the senses in a harmless way.

14. Sensuous _man often laughs where there is nothing to laugh at.

Whatever stimulates him, his inner contentment shows itself. eee aE Sarasa SSD

15. The man who understands finds almost everything laughable, the man of reason practically nothing.

16. A man well on in years was taken to task for still paying attention: to young women. ‘It’s the only way,’ he replied, ‘to rejuvenate oneself, Wee _Ů Á N and surely that’s what everybody wants.’ aed

17. We suffer people to tell us about our shortcomings, we condone punishment, we patiently endure a good deal on their account; but we are impatient when we are urged to discard them.

18. Certain shortcomings are necessary for an individual’s existence. We would feel uncomfortable if old friends were to discard certain characteristics.

19. ‘He’ll soon die’, as the saying goes, when someone acts out of character.

20. What kind of shortcomings are we allowed to keep, indeed cultivate in ourselves? The kind that flatter, rather than hurt, other people.

21. Passions are faults or virtues, only heightened ones. 22. Our passions are a genuine phoenix. As the old one burns down, the new one immediately arises out of the ashes.

FROM ELECTIVE AFFINITIES

23. Great passions are maladies without hope. What might heal them only makes them really dangerous.

24. Passion is both heightened and relieved by avowal. Maybe there is nothing where a middle way would be more desirable than in confiding and keeping silent vis-a-vis those we love.

25. It is the way of the world to accept a person as he presents himself; but he does have to present himself. We would rather tolerate a difficult person than suffer one who is insignificant.

26. One can foist anything on society, except what will have con- sequences.

27. We don’t get to know people when they come to us. We have to go to them to discover how things stand.

28. I find it almost natural that we have all manner of things to criticize about visitors, and that when they leave we judge them not all that charitably; for in a way we have a right to measure them by our own standards. In such cases even sensible and fair-minded people can hardly refrain from sharp censure.

29. If we, however, have been visiting others and have seen them in their setting, in their ways, in their necessary unavoidable circumstances, how they operate or how they fit in, then we really must be obtuse and malevolent if we find laughable what in more senses than one should appear venerable.

30. What we call good conduct and manners is meant to achieve what could otherwise only be effected by force, or not even by force.

31. Association with women is the basic element of good manners.

32. How can a person’s character and individuality go along with good manners?

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

33. Individuality should actually be heightened by good manners. Importance is what everybody wants, but it is not to be disturbing.

34. A well-educated soldier has the greatest advantages in life as a whole as well as in society.

35. Crude warriors at least don’t deny their own character, and because kindness is usually hidden under their strength, it is even possible, if need be, to get on with them.

36. No one is more objectionable than an awkward civilian. As he is not forced to deal with crude matters, one could demand refinement from him.

37. Confident friendliness, where an attitude of reverence is indicated, is always laughable. No one would put down his hat when he has hardly got through his compliments if he realized how funny that looks.

38. There is no such thing as an outward gesture of courtesy unrelated to a profound moral motive. True education would be of a kind to pass on this gesture together with its motive.

39. Behaviour is a mirror in which everyone shows his image. Gem RE ed

40. There is a courtesy of the heart; it is akin to love. From it comes the most comfortable courtesy of outward behaviour. C eA AIO

41. Voluntary dependence is the best of all states to be in, and how could this be possible without love! ed

42. We are never further away from our desires than when we imagine we possess what we desire.

43. No one is more a slave than the one who thinks he is free without being free.

FROM ELECTIVE AFFINITIES

44. A person has only to say he is free and he immediately feels con- strained. If he has the courage to say he is constrained, then he feels

free.

45. In the face of another’s great excellence the only possible salvation is love.

46. There is something horrifying about a man of outstanding excellence of whom stupid people are proud.

47. There is no hero, it is said, for a valet-de-chambre. But this is only because a hero can only be recognized and appreciated by another hero. So the valet will probably be able to evaluate his equals at their true worth.

48. There is no greater consolation for mediocrity than the fact that genius 1s not immortal.

49. The greatest people are always linked with their century through LT Ene oa—S

some weakness. ee

50. One usually considers people more dangerous than they actually ite.

51. Fools and intelligent people are equally undamaging. Half-fools and half-sages, these are the most dangerous of all.

52. There is no way of more surely avoiding the world than by art, and it is by art that you form the surest link with it.

53. Even at the moment of highest bliss and of highest distress we need the artist.

54. Art deals with what is hard to bear and with what is good.

55. Seeing difficulties handled with ease gives us a sight ofthe impossible.

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

56. Difficulties increase the nearer we get to the goal.

57. Sowing is not as onerous as harvesting.

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY Vol. I, issue 3: Naivety and Humour (1818)

58. Art is a serious business, most serious of all when it deals with noble sacred subjects; but the artist stands above art and above the subject: above the former because he uses it for his purposes, above the latter because he treats it in his own personal way.

59. Plastic art has to rely entirely on what is visible, on the outer appearance of what is natural. The purely natural we describe as ‘naive’ in so far as it is morally pleasing. Naive subjects, therefore, are the domains of art which should be a moral expression of what is natural. Subjects which point in both directions are therefore the most aus- picious.

60. What is naive, being natural, is cognate to reality. Reality, devoid of any moral aspect, is what we term common.

61. Art is in itself noble; that is why the artist has no fear of what is common. This, indeed, is already ennobled when he takes it up, and so we see the greatest artists boldly exerting their personal right of majesty.

62. In every artist there is a potential foolhardiness without which talent is inconceivable; this is more particularly activated when there is an attempt to constrain a gifted man and to hire his services in one-sided ways.

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

63. And here, too, Raphael is probably the most pure among newer artists. He is altogether naive, in his art reality is not in conflict with what is moral or even sacred. The tapestry depicting the Adoration of the Kings is a quite extraordinarily brilliant composition; from the most aged prince paying homage right down to the Moors and the monkeys mounted on camels and enjoying apples, Raphael depicts a whole world. Here, too, St Joseph could be characterized quite naively as the foster-father who is happy about the presents that have come in.

64. Artists, in general, have it in for St Joseph. The Byzantines, who cannot be accused of displaying too much humour, always make the saint look morose in nativity scenes. The child is bedded in the cradle, the animals look in, amazed that instead of their dry fodder they find a living creature of heavenly charm. Angels venerate the new arrival, his mother sits by quite still; but St Joseph sits facing the other way, turning his head crossly towards the strange scene.

65. Humour is one of the constituent elements of genius, but as soon as it predominates, it is no more than its surrogate; it goes hand in hand with art in decline and in the end destroys and annihilates it.

66. A work we now have in hand can explain this agreeably, the idea being to consider exclusively from an ethical point of view all those artists already known to us in various other ways, to expound by means of the subjects and the treatment of their works just what time and place, nation and teacher, what each artist’s indestructible individuality has contributed towards fashioning them into what they became and keeping them to what they were.

Vol. II, issue 3: Matters of Serious Moment (1820)

67. Quite often, as life goes on, when we feel completely secure as we go on our way, we suddenly notice that we are trapped in error, that we have allowed ourselves to be taken in by individuals, by objects, have dreamt up an affinity with them which immediately vanishes

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

before our waking eye; and yet we cannot tear ourselves away, held fast by some power that seems incomprehensible to us. Sometimes, however, we become fully aware and realize that error as = as truth

can move and an us on to action. No

e ETE) creative action is cenai a best, destcasmae what has been done is also not without happy consequence.

68. But the strangest error is that relating to ourselves and to our potential so that we devote our efforts to a worthy task, an honourable enterprise which is beyond our scope, reaching out for a goal we can never attain. Everyone feels the resulting Tantalus-Sisyphus torment the more bitterly the more upright has been his intention. And yet, very often when we see Ourselves for ever separated from what we had intended to achieve, we have already, on our way, found something else worth desiring, something conforming to our nature with which we were, in fact, born to rest content. l

Vol. HI, issue 1: Own and Adopted Ideas in Proverbial Formulation (1821)

69. If a person is to achieve all that others demand of him, he must consider himself more than he actually is.

70. As long as this isn’t taken to absurd lengths, we are quite happy to put up with it.

71. Work makes the journeyman.

72. Certain books are apparently written not so that we may learn from them, but to demonstrate the fact that the author knew something.

73. They whip up curds hoping it might turn into cream.

10

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

74. It is easier to imagine the mental state of a man who labours under total error than the state of mind of someone deluding himself with

half-truths.

75. Germans take pleasure in art that is unsure of itself and this stems from the fact that they are dabblers; for a dabbler cannot allow good art to be valid, else he himself would be worth nothing at all.

78. Wisdom is to be found only in truth.

80. The German is free in his thinking and that is why he fails to notice

when he lacks freedom in matters of taste and of the spirit.

81. Surely the world is quite full enough of riddles for us not to need to turn the simplest phenomena into riddles too?

82. The smallest hair casts its shadow.

83. Whatever I have tried to do in the past by false tendencies I have in the end learnt to understand.

84. Open-handedness wins favour for each and everyone, especially if humility goes with it.

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

85. A last violent cloud of dust whirls round once before a thunderstorm, soon to be stilled for a long time.

86. It is not easy for people to know one another, even with the best will and determination; for, moreover, there is bad will, which distorts

everything.

87. If people did not always want to put themselves on a par with others, they would know one another better.

88. Outstanding people are therefore in a worse case than others; as we don’t compare ourselves with them, we try to catch them out.

89. It’s not important in this world to know what people are like, but to be cleverer, at any given moment, than the person confronting us: }

witness all fairs and quacks.

go. One doesn’t find frogs wherever there is water; but there is water where you hear frogs.

91. Anyone who doesn’t know foreign languages knows nothing of his

OwT).

92. A mistaken idea is all very well as long as you are young; but it’s no good dragging it on into old age.

93. All false attitudes which age and linger on are useless, rancid stuff.

94. Through Cardinal Richelieu’s despotic unreasonableness Corneille had lost faith in himself.

95. Nature happens on specifications as one might wander into a cul-de- sac: there is no way through and no desire to turn back; hence the stubborn persistence of national characteristics.

I2

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

96. Metamorphosis in a higher sense of taking and giving, winning and losing, was already aptly described by Dante.

97. Everyone has some trait in his nature which, openly admitted, might well cause displeasure.

98. Whena man reflects on his physical or moral state, he usually decides that he is ill.

Human nature needs to be numbed from time to time, but vaito

100. What matters to an active man is to do the right thing; whether the right thing comes to pass should not bother him.

101. Some people keep knocking at the wall with a hammer and imagine they are hitting the nail on the head every time.

102. French words are not derived from written Latin words, but from spoken ones.

103. Events which are real by chance and in which, for the moment, we can discover neither a law of nature nor one of freedom may be termed common.

104. Painting and tattooing the body is a return to animality.

105. Writing up history is one way of getting rid of the past.

don’t understand, you don’t possess.

107. Not everyone to whom we pass on a striking insight uses it productively; he may take it as a quite well-known truth.

108. Favour, as a symbol of sovereignty, is bestowed by weak people.

13

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS 109. There is nothing common which fails to look comic when put

grotesquely.

110. Everyone manages to have just about enough strength left to act according to his convictions.

fin Let memory fail as long as needed. Y

112. Natural poets, so-called, are fresh and newly arraigned talents, rejects ofan over-cultivated, over-mannered and halting artistic epoch. They cannot avoid the commonplace, so one can view them as retro- grade; they are, however, agents of regeneration and they give rise to new progress.

113. No nation attains the power of judgement until it can sit in judgement on itself. But this great advantage is attained very late in the day.

114. Instead of contradicting my words, people should act according to my ideas.

115. Nature grows dumb when subjected to torture; the true answer to honest questioning is yes! yes! no! no! All else is idle and basically evil.

116. People are put out because truth is so simple; they should remember that even so they still find it hard enough to use and apply truth for their own profit.

117. I curse those who create a private world of error and yet incessantly demand that man should be useful.

118. A school of thought is to be viewed as a single individual who talks to himself for a hundred years and is quite extraordinarily pleased ith himself, however silly he may be.

14

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

120. Take two little sticks and paint one red, the other blue, then immerse them in water next to one another and each will appear

broken. Everyone can see this simple experiment with his own bodily eyes; one who views it with the eyes of the spirit will be set free from a thousand and more than a thousand erroneous paragraphs.

121. All who set themselves up against an ingenious cause are just striking against coals; sparks fly and kindle where they would otherwise have

had no effect.

122. Man would not be the most distinguished being on earth were he not too distinguished for it.

123. What was discovered long ago is buried again; how hard Tycho tried to show that comets were regular structures, a fact known to Seneca long ago.

124. How long the to and fro argument about the Antipodes went on! 125. Certain minds have to be left to their private illusions.

126. It is possible for people to produce works which are null and void without being bad; null and void because they lack substance, not bad, because the writer’s mind is informed by a general pattern of good models.

127. Snow is a fictitious cleanliness.

128. He who is afraid of ideas in the end also lacks concepts.

129. We nightly describe as our masters those from whom we can go on learning. Not everyone from whom we learn deserves this title.

I$

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

130. All that is lyrical must be very reasonable as a totality, and in its detail a little bit unreasonable.

131. There is something in your general make-up which is rather like the sea, to which we give a variety of names — and in the end it’s all just salt water.

132. The saying has it that conceited self-praise stinks; that may well be true, but the public has no nose for the kind of smell that goes with unjust censure by outsiders.

_ 133. The novel is a subjective epic in which the author begs permission _ _to describe the world in his own way. So the only question is: does he have a way? =the rest will come in due course.

\2 34. There are problematic natures not up to coping with any situation n which they find themselves and to whom none does justice. This is th e source of the tremendous inner conflict which consumes life without

\ giving any joy.

135. Our really and truly good deeds are mostly done clam, vi et precario [in secret, with great effort and precariously].

1 36. A merry companion is like a cart to give us a lift as we wander f along on our way. i

137. Dirt glitters when the sun happens to shine.

138. The miller thinks that no wheat grows except to keep his mill going.

j 39. It is difficult to be tolerant about the present moment: an indiffe ent one bores us, a good one has to be carried, and a bad one |

140. The happiest man is one who can link the end of his life with its beginning.

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

141. People are so obstinately contradictory: they dislike being urged to their advantage, they put up with any amount of constraint to their

disadvantage. 142. Circumspection is simple, later hindsight is complex. 143. A state of affairs which leads to daily vexation is not the right state.

144. Nothing is more usual in the case of uncautious behaviour than looking around for possible escape routes.

145. Hindus in the desert vow never to eat fish.

146. A partial truth goes on working for a time, but then, instead of complete enlightenment, a dazzling error suddenly intrudes; the world makes do with that and in this way whole centuries are duped.

147. In the sciences it is very worthwhile to seek out and then develop a partial truth already possessed by the Ancients.

i counters moved forward i in F) defeated, but they have set in motiona

149. It is as certain as it is wonderful that truth and error spring from the same source; frequently, therefore, error must not be attacked because this would also mean attacking the truth.

150. Truth belongs to man, error to time. This is why it was said about an extraordinary man: ‘Le malheur des temps a causé son erreur, mais la force de son ame len a fait sortir avec gloire? [“The misery of the times caused his error but the strength of his soul delivered him from it with glory.’]

151. Everyone has his idiosyncrasies and cannot get rid of them; and yet quite a few people are destroyed by their idiosyncrasies, often by

the most innocent ones.

17

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

152. Aperson who doesn’t rate himself too highly is worth much more : P = —

than he imagines. (

in c deeds and action, everything depends

In art and i in learning a on the fact that objects are unc derstood clearly y and treated their nature.

154. If reasonable, thoughtful people have a low opinion of the sciences in old age, this is only because they have demanded too much both of science and of themselves.

155. I’m sorry for people who make a great to-do about the transitory nature of things and get lost in meditations on earthly nothingness.

156. One phenomenon, one experiment, cannot prove anything; it is the link in a great chain, only valid in its context. If someone were to cover up a string of pearls and only show the most beautiful one, expecting us to believe that all the rest were like that, it is very unlikely that anyone would risk the deal.

157. Illustrations, verbal description, measurement, number and sign still do not constitute a phenomenon. The only reason why Newton’s doctrine could survive for so long is that this error was embalmed for a couple of centuries in the quarto volume of the Latin translation.

158. One must repeat one’s confession of faith from i ctually state what one condones, what one condemns; for the opposing

jomp isn’t silent either. ?

159. At the present time no one should be silent or give in; talk and be up and doing, not in order to vanquish, but so a ran the alert; whether with the majority or the minority is a matt indifference.

18

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

s hard and harsh, their —— mild ail humble: the i "a mee and the two cannot be combined. i

161. When a rainbow has lasted as long as a quarter of an hour we stop looking at it.

162. It used to happen, and still does, that I dislike a work of art because I’m not up to appreciating it; but if I sense some merit there, I try to get at it and this often leads to the happiest discoveries: new qualities are revealed to me in these things, new capacities in myself.

pital sum in one’s own home just as there are gs 2nd trust aer where individuals are supplied in days of i er EA creditor himself takes up his interest.

may look, however readily it appears to put 4 J common, oi it "m goes on secretly nursing and looks round for ways of satisfying them.

Vol. IV, issue 2: Own and Assimilated Material (1823)

166. It is much easier to recognize error than to find truth; the former lies on the surface, this is quite manageable; the latter resides in depth, and this quest is not everyone’s business.

167. We all live on the past and perish by the past.

168. When we are called to learn something great, we at once take refuge in our native poverty and yet have still learnt something.

19

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

169. The Germans are indifferent about staying together, yet they do want to be on their own. Each person, never mind who he may be, has his own way of being alone and is unwilling to be deprived of this.

170. The empincal-moral world consists largely of bad will and envy.

171. Superstition is the poetry of life; so it does the poet no harm to be superstitious.

172. Trust is a curious matter. Listen only to one person: he may be wrong or deceiving himself; listen to many: they are in the same case, and as a rule you don’t really discover the truth.

173. One should not wish anyone disagreeable conditions of life; but for him who is involved in them by chance, they are touchstones of

character and of the most decisive value to man.

174. A limited, honest man often sees right through the knavery of the sharpest tricksters.

175. One who feels no love must learn to flatter, otherwise he won’t make out.

176. You can neither protect nor defend yourself against criticism; you have to act in defiance of it and this is gradually accepted.

177. The crowd cannot do without efficient people and always finds efficiency burdensome.

178. Anyone who tells on my faults is my master, even if it happens to be my servant.

179. Memoirs from above downwards, or from below upwards: they are always bound to meet.

20

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

180. If you demand duties from people and will not concede them rights, you have to pay them well.

181. When a landscape is described as romantic, this means that there is a tranquil sense of the sublime in the form of the past, or, what amounts to the same, of solitude, remoteness, seclusion.

182. The splendid liturgical song “Veni Creator Spiritus’ is in actual fact a call addressed to genius; and this is also why it appeals powerfully to people who are spirited and strong.

183. Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws which without this appearance would have remained eternally hidden from us.

184. I can promise to be candid, not, however, to be impartial.

185. Ingratitude is always a kind of weakness. I have never known competent people to be ungrateful.

186. We are all so blinkered that we always imagine we are right; and so We can imagine an extraordinary spirit, a person who not only makes a mistake but even enjoys being wrong.

187. Completely moderate action to achieve what is good and right is very rare; what we usually see is pedantry seeking to retard, impertinence seeking to precipitate.

188. Word and image are correlatives which are always in quest of one another as metaphors and comparisons show us clearly enough. Thus, from of old, what is inwardly said or sung for the ear is at the same time intended for the eye. And so in ages which seem to us childlike, we see in codes of law and salvational doctrine, in bible and in primer, a continual balance of word and image. If they put into words what did not go into images, or formed an image of what could not be put into words, that was quite proper; but people often went wrong about this and used the spoken word instead of the pictorial image,

2I

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

which was the origin of those doubly wicked symbolically mystical monsters.

189. Anyone who devotes himself to the sciences suffers, firstly through retardations and then through preoccupations. To begin with, people are reluctant to admit the value of what we are providing; later on they act as though they already knew what we might be able to provide.

190. A collection of anecdotes and maxims is the greatest treasure for a man of the world — as long as he knows how to weave the former into apposite points of the course of conversation, and to recall the latter on fitting occasions.

191. People say, “Artist, study nature!’ But itis no small matter to develop what is noble out of what is common, beauty out of what lacks form.

192. Where concern is lost, memory fares likewise.

193. The world is a bell that is cracked: it clatters, but does not ring out clearly.

194. One must put up kindly with the pressing overtures of young dilettantes: with age they become the truest votaries of art and of the

master.

195. When people really deteriorate, their only contribution is malicious joy in the misfortune of others.

196. Intelligent people are always the best encyclopaedia.

197. There are people who never make mistakes because they never have sensible projects.

198. Knowing my attitude to myself and to the world outside me is what I call truth. And so everyone can have his own truth and yet it

remains the self-same truth.

22

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

199. What is particular is eternally defeated by what is general; the general has eternally to fit in with the particular.

200. No one can control what is really creative, and everybody just has to let it go its own way.

201. Anyone to whom nature begins to unveil its open mystery feels an irresistible yearning for nature’s noblest interpreter, for art.

202. Time is itself an element. 203. Man never understands how anthropomorphic he is.

204. A difterence which gives reason nothing to register is not a difference.

205. In phanerogamy there is still so much of what is cryptogamic that centuries will not suffice to unriddle it.

206. Exchanging one consonant tor another might perhaps be due to some organ deficiency, transforming a vowel into a diphthong the result of conceited pathos.

207. If one had to study all laws, one would have no time at all to transgress them.

208. One can’t live for everyone, more especially not for those with whom one wouldn't care to live.

209. A call to posterity originates in the clear vital feeling that there is such a thing as permanence and that even if this is not immediately acknowledged it will, in the end, win the recognition of a minority

and finally of a majority.

210. Mysteries do not as yet amount to miracles.

23

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

211. I convertiti stanno freschi appresso di me. [The converted are puzzled by me.]

212. Reckless, passionate favouritism of problematic men of talent was a failing of my younger years of which I could never completely rid myself. |

213. I would like to be honest with you without us parting company; but this isn’t possible. You are acting wrongly and trying to sit between two stools, not getting any followers and losing your friends. What’s to come of this!

214. No matter whether you’re of high rank or low, you can’t avoid paying the price of your common humanity.

215. Writers of a liberal persuasion are now on to a good game; they have the whole public at their feet.

216. When [hear talk about liberal ideas, I’m always amazed how people like to delude themselves with the sound of empty words: an idea is not allowed to be liberal! Let it be forceful, doughty, self-enclosed, so as to fulfil its God-given mission of being productive. Still less is a concept allowed to be liberal; for its commission is completely different.

217. But where we have to look for liberality is in people’s attitudes and these are their feelings come to life.

218. Attitudes, however, are seldom liberal because an attitude springs directly from the person, his immediate context and his needs.

219. We'll leave it at that; by this yardstick we should measure what we hear day after day!

220. It’s always only our eyes, the way we imagine things; nature quite alone knows what it wills, what it intended.

24

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

221. ‘Give me where I stand!’ Archimedes. “Take where you stand!’ Nose. Declare where you stand!

G. 222. It is general causal relationships which the observer will explore, and he will attribute similar phenomena to a general cause; rarely will he think of the immediate cause.

223. No intelligent man experiences a minor stupidity.

224. In every work of art, great or small, and down to the smallest detail, everything depends on the initial conception.

225. There is no such thing as poetry without tropes as poetry is a single trope writ large.

226. A kindly old examiner whispers into a schoolboy’s ear: ‘Etiam nihil didicisti? [ you haven’t learnt anything as yet] and gives him a pass-mark.

227. Excellence is unfathomable; tackle it in what way you will.

228. Aemilium Paulum — virum in tantum landandum, in quantum intelligi virtus potest. [Aemilius Paulus — a man to be praised as highly as virtue can be understood.]

229. I was intent on pursuing what is general until such time as I came

to comprehend the achievement of outstanding people in what is particular.

25

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

Vol. V, issue 1: Individual Points (1824)

230. In the course of my long-standing interest in the life history of people of little and of great importance, I chanced on the following idea: you might compare the former with the warp in the world tapestry, the latter with the weft; the first really indicate the extent of the web in its width, the others its tension, firmness, with the addition, maybe, of some kind of pattern. But fate with its shears determines the length to which all else must yield and be subject. We won’t pursue the comparison any further.

231. Books, too, have their life-experience which cannot be taken away from them.

Who never ate his bread with tears,

Who never sat weeping on his bed Through long nights of sorrow,

He does not know you, O heavenly powers.

These deeply painful lines were said over to herself by a most perfect, adored queen, condemned to the cruellest exile and boundless banish- ment. She made a friend of the book which transmits these words and much other painful experience, drawing from it grievous comfort; who could dare to belittle an impact which even now reaches out into eternity?

232. It is of the greatest delight to see how, in the Apollo room of the Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati, Domenico has placed Ovid’s Meta- morphoses in the most fitting surroundings; and in this connection we like to remember that our experience of the most joyful events is doubly blissful if vouchsafed to us in a splendid landscape, indeed, that moments which were in themselves indifferent are raised to high significance by a worthy setting.

26

Se ee ee =

(EGRET Ee Se

———

SSS

|

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

233. Poetry is most effective when things are beginning, be they altogether crude, half-cultured, or when a culture is in the process of change, when a foreign culture is being apprehended, so that one can say there is undeniably the effect of a new beginning.

234. In the seventeenth century one’s female lover was aptly termed ‘man-intoxicator’.

235. At Hiddensee the most loving expression is “dear washed-clean little soul’.

236. Truth is a torch, but a monstrously huge one; which is why we are all just intent on getting past it, our eyes blinking as we go, even terrified of getting burnt.

237. ‘Wise people have a lot in common’ — Aeschylus.

238. The unreasonable thing about otherwise reasonable people is that they don’t know how to sort out what someone is saying when he’s not really put it as precisely as he should have done.

239. Because he speaks, everyone believes that he can also speak about language.

240. You’ve only got to grow old to be more lenient; I see no fault committed of which I too haven’t been guilty.

241. The person engaged in action is always unconscionable; no one except the contemplative has a conscience.

242. Do happy people imagine that an unhappy person should perish decently before them like a gladiator as the Roman rabble used to

demand?

243. Timon consulted someone about his children’s education. ‘Let them,’ this man said, ‘be taught matters they will never understand.’

27

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

244. There are people whom I wish well and would wish I could wish even better.

245. One brother broke pots, the other broke pitchers. Destructive goings-on!

246. Just as, out of habit, one consults a run-down clock as though it were still going, so too one may look at the face of a beautiful woman as though she were still in love.

247. Hatred 1s active displeasure, envy is passive; hence one need not be surprised that envy soon turns into hatred.

248. There is something magical about rhythm; it even makes us believe that the sublime is something of our own.

249. A dilettante who takes his subject seriously and a scholar who works mechanically turn into pedants.

250. Art can be furthered by no one except the master. Benefactors further the artist, that’s right and proper; but that is not always the way art is furthered.

251. “Clarity is a suitable distribution of light and shade.” Hamann, take note!

252. Shakespeare is rich in wonderful images which arise from personified concepts and would not become us at all, while, to him, they are wholly apposite, because in his time all art was dominated by allegory. The art of printing had been invented over a hundred years before, and still had an aura of sacredness, as we can tell from the way books were bound at that time, and thus the noble poet loved and honoured them. We, however, now stitch our paper covers and do not readily respect either the binding or the content of a book.

253. Herr von Schweinichen’s [ journal] isa remarkable record of history

28

a_a

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

and of manners; we are richly rewarded for the trouble taken to read it. For certain conditions it can become a treasury of symbolism of the most perfect kind. It is not a ‘reader’, but it is essential to have read it.

254. It is the most foolish of all errors for young people of good intelligence to imagine that they will forfeit their originality if they acknowledge truth already acknowledged by others.

255. Scholars are usually hostile when they are refuting; someone who is wrong is immediately seen as a deadly enemy.

256. Beauty can never be clear about itself.

257. As soon as subjective and so-called sentimental poetry was given the same rights as objective, descriptive poetry — and this is something which could really not have been avoided, as it would have led to the complete rejection of modern poetry — it was to be expected that even if a true poetical genius appeared, he would always portray the cheerful aspects of the inner life rather than the general aspects of a great worldly life. This has in fact happened, so that there is no such thing as poetry

without images and one cannot, of course, withhold all commendation.

Vol. V, issue 2: Individual Points (1825)

258. On the scaffold Madame Roland asked for writing materials so as to register the very special thoughts that came to her on her last journey. A pity she was denied this; for at the end of life ideas dawn on a composed mind that have till then been unthinkable; they are like blessed spirits that alight shining on the mountain summits of the past.

259. You often say to yourself in the course of your life that you ought to avoid having too much business, ‘polypragmosyne’, and, more especially, that the older you get, the more you ought to avoid entering on new business. But it’s all very well saying this, and giving yourself and others good advice. The very fact of growing older means taking

29

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

up a new business; all our circumstances change, and we must either stop doing anything at all or else willingly and consciously take on the new role we have to play on life’s stage.

260. Great talents are a rarity, and it is rare that such people recognize themselves for what they are; but vigorous unconscious action and thinking have such highly gratifying, but also ungratifying, results that a significant life may well be consumed in a conflict of this kind. Instances ofthis, as remarkable as they are sad, are provided by Medwin’s conversations.

261. I don’t venture to talk about the absolute in a theoretical sense; I may, however, be allowed to state that anyone who has seen and recognized it as aphenomenon and always kept it in view will experience

very great gain.

262. To live in the realm of ideas means treating the impossible as though it were possible. The same goes for character: ifthe two coincide, events follow from which the world’s astonishment takes centuries to recover.

263. Napoleon, who lived wholly in a realm of ideas, was, however, incapable of a conscious grasp of this realm; he completely repudiates everything ideological, in denying all reality while all the time eagerly intent on realizing it. But his clear, incorruptible intellect cannot bear a perpetual inner contradiction of this kind, and it is most important when heis, as it were, impelled to talk about this matter in a characteristic and most attractive way.

264. He looks on the idea as a spiritual being which, although it has no reality, does, when it disintegrates, leave behind a residuum (caput mortuum), the reality of which we cannot wholly deny. If this seems to us rigid and all too materialistic, he can also talk quite differently in trustful and confidential conversation with his friends about the irresistible consequences of his life and doings. Then he likes to admit that life brings forth what is alive, that thoroughly creative action has

30

E ae E

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

far-reaching effects for all time. He likes to admit that he has given fresh stimulus, a new direction to the course of the world.

265. However, it remains very remarkable that people whose personality is almost entirely ‘idea’ are so very shy of the realm of fantasy. Hamann was like this: it seemed intolerable to him to hear talk about things in another world than this. From time to time he gave expression to this dislike in a certain paragraph of which, however, he wrote fourteen variations, and even then probably being unsatisfied with what he had written. Two of these attempts have come down to us; we ourselves have ventured to formulate a third one which we are publishing by reason of our earlier reflections above.

266. Man is set as a reality in the midst of a real world and is endowed with organs of a kind capable of both recognizing and also producing what is real and at the same time possible. All healthy people are convinced of their own existence and of something that exists all around them. At the same time there is also a hollow spot in the brain, that is, a place where no object is mirrored, just as in the eye itself there is a little spot which has no vision. Ifa man devotes special attention to this place, if he immerses himself in it, he falls victim to a mental illness and here has an intuition about things in another world which are, in fact, non-entities, having neither form nor limit but which, like a void-in-the-night, instil fear and in more than ghostly fashion persecute those who do not vigorously tear themselves away.

267. How little of all that has happened has been recorded in writing, how little of this corpus of writings has been preserved! By its very nature, literature is fragmentary; it contains monuments of the human spirit in so far as these constitute written texts and have ultimately survived.

268. And yet, in spite of all the incompleteness of the literary scene, we

find repetitions multiplied a thousandfold, which shows how limited are man’s mind and his destiny.

31

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

269. As, however, we have been called upon to be assessors, though without a brief, of this general world council, and we allow ourselves to be briefed day in day out by newspaper journalists, it is also great luck to discover competent reporters about times past. In recent times I have found wniters of this kind in Raumer and Wachler.

270. The question as to which of the two is greater, the historian or the poet, should not even be raised; they do not compete with one another, as little as does the runner with the boxer. To each is due his own crown.

271. The historian has a twofold duty: firstly towards himself and then to his reader. On his own account he must submit to precise scrutiny what might actually have happened, and for his reader’s sake he must establish what in fact did happen. How he deals with his own attitude can be agreed with his colleagues; the public, however, must not be let into the secret of how little in history can be deemed to be definitely settled.

272. Books, we find, are like new acquaintances. To begin with, we are highly delighted if we find an area of general agreement, if we feel a friendly response concerning some important aspect of our life. It is only on closer acquaintance that differences begin to emerge, at which point the great thing is not immediately to recoil, as may happen at a more youthful age, but to cling very firmly to areas of agreement and fully to clarify our differences without on that account aiming at identity

in our views.

273. Friendly and instructive entertainment of this kind was provided for me by Stiedenroth’s Psychology. He is incomparably good in his exposition of the total effect of what is outside or what is within, and we gradually see the world created anew in ourselves. But he is not as successful in describing the contrary outward reaction of the inner world. He does less than justice to the entelechy which does not assimilate without also appropriating something of its own; and genius simply does not fit into this scheme; and in thinking he can derive the

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

ideal from experience and saying: a child doesn’t idealize, one could reply: a child doesn’t procreate; for becoming aware of the ideal also presupposes a form of puberty. But enough of this, he remains a valued companion and friend and is always to be within reach.

274. Anyone who lives much among children will find that no impres- sion made from outside remains without a counter-reaction.

275. The counter-reaction of a really childlike being is even passionate, its intervention firm.

276. That is why children live in a realm of hasty judgements, indeed, of prejudice; for time is needed to blot out what has been seized in one-sided haste and then replace it with something more general. To pay attention to this is one of the educator’s chief duties.

277. A two-year-old boy had understood the fact of birthday celebra- tions and had accepted with joy and gratitude the presents received on his birthday, sharing, too, in his brother’s pleasure when his turn came.

AS a result of this, when there were so many presents around on Christmas Eve, he asked when his Christmas would come. It took a whole further year for him to understand a general feast for all.

278. The great difficulty about psychological observations is that you always have to look on the inner and outer sphere as being parallel or, rather, as interwoven. There is constant systole and diastole, a breathing in anda breathing out of the living organism; even if you cannot actually pronounce on this, you must observe it precisely and bear it in mind.

279. My relationship with Schiller was based on the decisive bent of both of us towards one object; our shared activity rested on our differing ways of striving to achieve this object.

On a slight disagreement between us which we once discussed and of which I am reminded by a passage in his letter, I made the following reflections.

There is a great difference whether a poet is looking for the particular

33

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

that goes with the general, or sees the general in the particular. The first gives rise to allegory where the particular only counts as an example, an illustration of the particular; but the latter in fact constitutes the nature of poetry, expressing something particular without any thought of the general, and without indicating it. Now whoever has this living grasp of the particular is at the same time in possession of the general, without realizing it, or else only realizing it later on.

280. The only way to see absurdities of the day in proportion is to compare them with great masses of world history.

Vol. V, issue 3: Individual Points (1826)

281. You really only know when you know little; doubt grows with -

knowledge. 282. It’s really a person’s mistakes that make him endearing. 283. Bonus vir semper tiro. [A good man is always a beginner. ]

284. There are people who love and seek out those like themselves, and, then again, those who love and pursue their opposites.

285. Anyone who had always allowed himself to take so poor a view of the world as our adversaries make out would have turned into a rotten subject.

286. Envy and hatred limit the observer’s view to the surface even if this is also associated with acumen; if this, however, goes hand in hand with kindliness and love, the observer can see right through the world and mankind; indeed, he can hope to reach the Allhighest.

287. An English critic credits me with ‘panoramic ability’, for which I must tender my most cordial thanks. |

34

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

288. A certain measure of poetical talent is desirable for every German as the right way to cloak his condition, of whatever kind it may be, with a certain degree of worth and charm.

289. The subject-matter is visible to everyone, contentis only discovered by him who has something to contribute, and form is a mystery to

most.

290. People’s inclinations favour what is vitally alive. And youth again forms itself by youth.

291. We may get to know the world however we choose, it will always keep a day and a night aspect.

292. Error is continually repeated in action, and that is why we must not tire of repeating in words what is true.

293. Just as in Rome, besides the Romans, there was also a people of statues, so, too, apart from this real world, there is also an illusory world,

mightier almost, where the majority live.

294. People are like the Red Sea: the staff has hardly kept them apart, immediately afterwards they flow together again.

295. The historian’s duty: to distinguish truth from falsehood, certainty from uncertainty, doubtful matters from those which are to be rejected.

296. Only someone to whom the present is important writes a chronicle.

297. Thoughts recur, convictions perpetuate themselves; circumstances pass by irretrievably.

298. Among all peoples, the Greeks have dreamt life’s dream most beautifully.

35

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

299. Translators are to be regarded as busy matchmakers who exalt the great loveliness ofa half-veiled beauty: they kindle an irresistible longing for the original.

300. We like to rate Antiquity higher than ourselves, but not posterity. It’s only a father who doesn’t envy a son’s talent.

301. It’s not at all hard to subordinate yourself; but when you are set on a declining course, in the descendant, how hard it is to admit that what is, in fact, below you is above you!

302. Our whole achievement is to give up our existence in order to exist.

303. All we devise and do is exhausting; happy the man who doesn’t get weary. -

304. ‘Hope is the second soul of those who are unfortunate.’ 305. ‘L’amour est un vrai recommenceur.’ [Love is truly a new beginning.|

306. There is, too, in man a desire to serve; hence French chivalry is a form of service, ‘servage’.

307. ‘In the theatre visual and aural entertainment greatly limit reflection.’

308. Experience can be extended into infinity; in not quite the same sense theory can be purified and perfected. To the former the universe is open in all directions; the latter remains locked within the confines of human capacity. This is why all modes of conceptual thinking are bound to reappear, and that is why, strangely enough, a theory of limited value can regain favour in spite of wider experience.

309. It is always the same world which lies open to our view, is always contemplated or surmised, and it is always the same people who live

36

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

in truth or wrong-headedly, more comfortably in the latter way than in the former.

310. Truth is contrary to our nature, not so error, and this for a very simple reason: truth demands that we should recognize ourselves as limited, error flatters us that, in one way or another, we are unlimited.

311. It is now nearly twenty years since all Germans ‘transcend’. Once they notice this, they are bound to realize how odd they are.

312. It is natural enough that people should imagine they can still do what they were once able to do; that others imagine themselves capable of doing what they never could do is perhaps strange but not infrequent.

313. At all times only individuals have had an effect on scientific know- ledge, not the epoch. It was the epoch that did Socrates to death by poison, the epoch that burnt Huss: epochs have always remained true

to type. 314. This is true symbolism, where the particular represents the general,

not as dream and shadow, but as a live and immediate revelation of the

unfathomable.

315. As soon as the ideal makes a demand on the real, it in the end consumes it and also itself. Thus credit (paper money) consumes silver and its own self.

316. Mastery is often seen as egoism.

317. Assoonas good works and their merit cease, sentimentality immedi- ately takes over in the case of Protestants.

318. If you can seek out good advice, it’s as though you yourself have the capacity for action.

a7

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

319. Mottoes point to what one hasn’t got, what one is striving for. As is right and fitting, one keeps this constantly in view.

320. ‘If you don’t want to lift a stone on your own, you should leave it alone even when someone else is around.’

321. Despotism promotes autocracy because it expects a sense of re- sponsibility in each individual, whether of elevated or low standing, and in this way evokes the highest degree of activity.

322. All that tends towards Spinoza in the poetical realm turns into Machiavellism in the area of reflection.

323. You have to pay dearly for your mistakes if you want to get rid of them, and even then you can count yourself lucky.

324. Ifa German writer wanted to lord it over his nation in olden days, all he had to do was to put across the idea that there was someone around who wanted to rule over them. Then people were forthwith so intimidated that they were glad to be bossed no matter by whom.

325. ‘Nothing in the human situation is as unstable or fleeting as power not born of its own strength.’

326. There are also pseudo-artists: dilettanti and speculators; the former go in for art for the sake of pleasure, the latter for profit.

327. Sociability was part of my nature; and that is why I was able to enlist fellow workers for my manifold projects and make myself their fellow worker; in this way I had the good fortune to see myself live on in them, and them in me.

328. The sum total of my inner activity has turned out to be a lively process of trial and error, a heuristic process acknowledging an unknown intuitively surmised rule, an endeavour to find one of this kind in the outer world and introduce it into the outer world.

38

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

329. There is an enthusiastic way of reflecting which is of the greatest value, provided only that you don’t let it carry you away.

330. Preparation for school is to be found only in the school itself.

331. Error is related to truth as sleeping is to waking. I have observed that when one has been in error, one turns to truth as though revitalized.

332. Everyone suffers who doesn’t act for himself. One acts for others so as to share in their enjoyment.

333. What is conceivable belongs to the realm of the senses and the understanding. Adjoining this is propriety which is related to seemliness. Propriety, however, is a condition belonging to a particular time and to a definite set of circumstances.

334. We really only learn from books we cannot judge. The author of a book we could really judge ought surely to be learning from us.

335. That is why the Bible is an eternally effective book, because as long as the world goes on, no one will appear and say: I grasp it as a whole and understand it in detail. We, however, say modestly: as a whole it is venerable and in detail we can make use of it.

336. All mysticism is transcendence of and detachment from some object which one considers is being relinquished. The greater and the more meaningful what is given up, the richer the mystic’s productions.

337. Oriental mystical poetry is at a great advantage in that the richness of the world, to which the initiate can point, is always available to the poet. This means that he is still at the very centre of the plenitude which he is leaving, and he revels in what he would like to discard.

338. Because religion itself offers mysteries, there ought not to be Christian mystics. They, moreover, rapidly become abstruse, tending

towards the abyss of personal subjectivity.

39

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

339. A witty man says that the new kind of mysticism is the dialectic of the heart, and that what sometimes makes it so astonishing and seductive is that it raises to an articulate level matters not otherwise accessible by the usual avenues of understanding, reason and religion. Let anyone who believes he has enough courage and vigour to study it without being overwhelmed go down into the cavern of Trophonius, but do it at his own peril.

340. The Germans should not utter the word ‘Gemüt’ for a span of thirty years and then ‘Gemiit’ would gradually be forthcoming again; now it only signifies condoning our own and other people’s foibles.

341. People’s prejudices are based on the respective character of each individual, and that is why, closely associated as they are with this circumstance, they are altogether inseparable; neither clear evidence nor common sense nor reason have the slightest effect on them.

342. Character often makes a law out of weakness. People who are experts in the way of the world have said: ‘Fear used as a mask for intelligence is insuperable.’ Weak people often have revolutionary views; they imagine they would be happy if they were not subject to rule and don’t feel that they are incapable of governing either themselves or others.

343. More recent German artists are precisely in the same case: they declare that the branch of art beyond their reach is doing damage and is therefore to be chopped off.

344. Common sense is born unalloyed in sound people, develops spon- taneously and manifests itself in a definite realization and acknowledge- ment of what is necessary and useful. Practical men and women apply and use it with sound judgement. Where it is lacking, both sexes think that what they covet is necessary and what pleases them is useful.

345. All those who reach a state of freedom put across their failings: strong people exaggerate, weak people are negligent.

40

J

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

346. The battle of what is old, established, continuous against develop- ment, against further or against new formation, always remains the same. All order finally issues in pedantry; to get rid of the latter one destroys the former, and it takes a while before people realize that there has got to be a return to order. Classicism and Romanticism, domination by guilds and the demand for free trade, tenacious clinging to and shattering of basic foundations: it is always the same conflict which, in the end, always creates a new one. A ruler’s most sensible procedure would therefore be to moderate this battle so that, without the destruc- tion of any one side, it reaches a point of balance; but this isn’t given to man and God doesn’t seem to want it either.

347. Which training method is to be considered best? Answer: that of the natives of Hydra Island. Islanders and seafarers as they are, they soon take their boys on board ship and let them grow up in service. As soon as they achieve anything, they share in the spoils; and so they already take an interest in trade, barter and booty, and this forms the most Competent coasters and seafarers, the most canny traders and the most audacious pirates. A basic greup of this kind may of course nurture heroes who in their own person fix the destructive firebrand to the flagship of the enemy fleet.

348. Everything excellent limits us momentarily because we feel unable to match up to it; only in so far as we subsequently accept it into our own culture, absorb it as belonging to our own mental and temperamental powers, do we come to love and value it.

349. No wonder that we more or less prefer to be surrounded by mediocrity because it leaves us in peace; it gives us the cosy feeling of

consorting with the likes of our own selves.

350. You don’t have to censure vulgarity; for this remains eternally true to itself.

41

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

351. We cannot get away from a contradiction in our own make-up; we must make an effort to reconcile it. If other people contradict us, that’s not our concern, that’s their business.

352. There is at one and the same time so much capacity and excellence in the world, but no convergence between them.

353. Youask which form of government is the best? Whichever teaches us to govern ourselves.

354. You, a capable man, cannot instruct by lecturing; this, like preach- ing, is truly useful as a function of our own way of life if followed by conversation and catechizing, as was originally the case. However, you can and you will teach, that is, if your deeds help to give life to your judgement and your judgement life to your deeds.

355. There is no objection to the Three Unities when the subject is very simple; occasionally, however, three times three unities, happily intertwined, will produce a very pleasing effect.

356. When men drag women around with them, they will be spun off as though from a distaff.

357. It may happen that a man will be horribly thrashed by public and domestic disasters; but when callous fate comes in contact with rich sheaves, it simply crushes the straw; the grains, meanwhile, feel nothing, and leap around merrily on the barn floor, not caring whether they are on the way to the mill or to the field for sowing.

358. Arden of Feversham, Shakespeare’s youthful work. It is altogether serious in its conception and execution, no trace of concern about its effect, perfectly dramatic, quite untheatrical.

359. Shakespeare’s finest dramas occasionally lack ease: they are some- thing more than they should be, and precisely on that account they

point to the great poet.

42

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

360. The greatest probability of fulfilment still admits an element of doubt; that is why what you hope for is always surprising when it really happens.

361. You have to make allowances for all other arts; it is only Greek art that leaves you forever in its debt.

362. ‘Vis superba formae’ [“The superb strength of form.’] An attractive formulation by Johannes Secundus.

363. The sentimentality of the English is humorous and tender, that of the French is popular and tearful, of the Germans naive and realistic.

364. The absurd, tastefully presented, arouses repugnance and admiration.

365. Of the best kind of society one used to say that its conversation is instructive, its silence formative.

366. Someone described a remarkable poem by one of the female sex as having more energy than enthusiasm, more character than content, more rhetoric than poetry, and, taking it all in all, there was something masculine about it.

367. There is nothing more dreadful than active ignorance.

368. You have to distance yourself from beauty and intelligence if you don’t want to become their vassal.

369. Mysticism is the heart’s scholastic learning, the dialectic of feeling. 370. One is indulgent towards old people as one is towards children. 371. An old person suffers the loss of one of the greatest human rights:

he is no longer judged by his equals.

43

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

372. My experience with the natural sciences is like that of a man who gets up early and then in the dusky light of dawn impatiently awaits the early brightness of the sky, and yet is blinded when the sun actually appears.

373. There is, and there will continue to be, much argument about the usefulness and the damage of disseminating the Bible. It is clear to me that it will do damage, as hitherto, if it is used dogmatically and in a fantastic way: it will be useful, as heretofore, ifitis accepted educationally and sensitively.

374. Great pristine forces, developed from all eternity or within time, work irresistibly, whether usefully or destructively is a matter of chance.

375. An ‘idea’ is something eternal and unique; it is not correct to use this term in the plural. Everything that enters our awareness and that we can talk about is no more than the manifestation of an ‘idea’; we express concepts, and to that extent ‘idea’ is itself a concept.

376. In the context of aesthetics it is not apt to speak of ‘the idea of beauty’; in this way you isolate the concept of beauty, which surely cannot be thought of as a separate entity. You can have a concept of what is beautiful and this concept can be transmitted.

377. The manifestation of the idea as beauty is just as fleeting as the manifestation of what is sublime, witty, amusing, ridiculous. This is what makes it so hard to talk about such topics.

378. It could be truly didactic if, in aesthetic matters, one were to take one’s students past all that is worth registering with the senses or present it to them at its climax and when they are at their most receptive. But, as this demand cannot be fulfilled, the teacher lecturing from his desk should take his greatest pride into putting across the concepts of so many manifestations in such a way that the learners are made receptive to all that is good, beautiful, great, true, grasping it with joy when it comes upon them at the right moment. And then, without their noticing

44

~ ee i

-. inp. ge ee ee M a

FROM ART AND ANTIQUITY

and knowing it, the basic idea from which it all proceeds would have become a living reality for them.

379. In considering educated people, one finds that they are receptive to only one manifestation of primordial being, in fact to only a few, and this is quite enough. The man of talent can work things out in practice and need not take notice of theoretical details: it will not disadvantage the musician to ignore the sculptor, and vice versa.

380. One should think of everything as it will work out in practice, and should therefore aim to achieve a fitting interaction of related aspects of the overall ‘idea’ in so far as these are to appear through people. Painting, sculpture and the miming arts are inseparably related; but the artist who feels called to one of these must beware of damaging effects from the other: the sculptor can allow himself to be seduced by the painter, the painter by the actor, and all three of them can confuse one another to such an extent that they can none of them stand on their feet.

381. Mimetic dance as an art form might really lead to the ruin of all the plastic arts, and rightly so. Fortunately the sensual attraction which this art form evokes is very fleeting and there has to be exaggeration if the attraction is to work. Fortunately this immediately frightens off other artists; but if they are wise and careful, they can learn a great deal in the process.

Vol. VI, issue 1: [untitled] (1827) 382. The first and last thing demanded of genius is love of truth.

383. He who is and remains true to himself and to others has the most attractive quality of the greatest talents.

45

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

Brocard

364. Art is the conveyor of the inexpressible; it therefore looks like folly again to attempt conveying it by words. But our effort to do this enriches our understanding in many ways, and this, in turn, is good for our potential.

Relationship, inclination, love, passion, habit

385. The kind of love whose violence youth feels is not fitting for old age, like everything that presupposes productivity. It is a rare thing for this to be maintained with the passing of years.

386. All real and all half-poets make us so familiar with love that it would have become trivial had it not constantly and by its very nature renewed itself in full power and splendour.

387. Quite apart from the way passion dominates and fetters a person, he is also tied up in many necessary relationships. Whoever is unaware of these or wants to transform them into love will inevitably become

unhappy.

368. All love is connected with presence; what is agreeable to us by its presence always shows itself to us when it is absent and constantly makes us want its renewed presence, and, when this wish is granted, is accompanied by lively delight; when this joy persists we are filled by an ever-equal happiness — this is what we really love, and this means that we can love everything that can enter our presence; indeed, to formulate an ultimate statement: love of the divinity always strives to make what is highest present to us.

389. Inclination is closely related and not rarely develops into love. It

is cognate to a pure relationship which resembles love in every way except that it does not necessarily demand continued presence.

46

a oe =

FROM THE PERIODICAL ISSUES ON MORPHOLOGY

390. This kind of inclination can point in many directions, be connected with many people and objects, can really make a person happy in a continuous process if he knows how to keep going. It is worth careful consideration that habit and custom can completely replace passionate love. What it demands is not just a charming presence, but a comfortable one; then, however, it is invincible. It takes a lot to break off a relationship to which one has become accustomed; it persists in spite of all that is objectionable; displeasure, vexation, anger, cannot prevail against it; indeed, it outlasts contempt, hatred. I don’t know whether a novelist has ever managed a perfect description of it; he would, moreover, only have to try his hand at it casually, episodically; for if he tried to develop this theme more precisely, he would have to do battle with much that is improbable.

PNOM THE PERIODICAL ISSUES ON MORPHOLOGY

Vol. I, issue 4: [untitled] (1822)

391. The supreme thing we have received from God and from nature is life, the rotating movement of the monad about itself; knowing neither rest nor repose; the instinct to foster and nurture life is indestruct- ibly innate in everyone; its idiosyncrasy, however, remains a mystery to ourselves and to others.

392. The second favour bestowed by forces working on us from on high is the monad’s inner experience, gradual apprehension of, then inter- vention in, the environments ofthe external world, the monad here being seen as a lively-mobile entity which, only by this process of intervention, actually becomes conscious of its own being as something unlimited within, but limited without. It is by this experience, though aptitude, attentiveness and luck also count, that we can reach clarity within our- selves; for some, however, this too must always remain a mystery.

47

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

393. As a third factor we develop what we reveal to the outside world by way of action and deed, of word and writing; this belongs to the world rather than to ourselves, and the world understands it more readily than we can; and yet the world feels that it needs to know as much as possible about our experience if it is to see quite clearly what we are doing. This is why people are most eager to read about youthful beginnings, stages of intellectual development, biographical incidents, anecdotes and things of that kind.

394. This outward effect is inevitably followed by a reaction, whether it is love seeking to further us or hatred knowing how to hold us back. The nature of this conflict varies little in the course of our life because man, too, remains like himself, this also being the case with everything that we in our own particular way like or dislike.

395. What friends do for us and with us is also a part of our living experience because it strengthens and furthers our personality. What enemies undertake against us is not part of our own living experience; it merely comes to our knowledge; we repudiate it and protect ourselves against it as we would against frost, storm, rain and hail, or other outer evils which are to be expected.

396. One is not inclined to live with just anyone, and, similarly, one can’t live for everyone. Whoever really grasps this can greatly esteem his friends and not hate or persecute his enemies: there are, in fact, few things of greater advantage than learning to appreciate the good points of your opponents: this gives you decided superiority over them.

397. If we go back in history, we are always aware of personalities with whom we could get on and others with whom we should certainly be

in conflict.

398. The most important thing is, however, our own contemporary time, because it is most clearly mirrored in us and we in it.

48

FROM THE PERIODICAL ISSUES ON MORPHOLOGY

399. In his old age Cato was denounced in the law courts, and the chief point he made in his defence oration was that one couldn’t plead one’s case except before those with whom one had lived. And he is perfectly right: how is a jury to judge on premises which it simply has not got? How is it to take counsel about motives which are already far remote in time?

400. Experience is something we can all value, especially the man who is old and has time to think, to reflect; he has the confident, comfortable feeling that no one can rob him of this.

401. My nature studies, for instance, are based entirely on personal experience; who can take away from me the fact that I was born in 1749, and that (omitting a good deal) I faithfully toiled away at Erxleben’s manual of Naeturestudy, that I kept up with the subsequent editions inordinately piled up by the zeal of Lichtenberg; and that I didn’t just read in print about new discoveries, but immediately came to know and inform myself about every new discovery as it was in progress, that I followed the great discoveries of the eighteenth century step by step right up to the present day, seeing them rise up before me like stars of wonder? Who can take away from me the secret joy of knowing that I myself, by unremitting attentive work, came so close to some great discovery which astonished the world? So close, in fact, that it seemed to break forth from my own innermost mind, as it were, and I then had a clear vision of the few steps which, in my darksome researches, I had failed to take?

402. Anyone who has witnessed the discovery of air balloons will testify to the world-wide movement this brought about, what concern surrounded the balloon navigators, what longing surged up in so many thousands of hearts to take part in such sky wanderings, long ago posited, prophesied, always believed in, always unbelievable; how fresh and circumstantial were the newspaper accounts of each single successful attempt, how there were special supplements and illustrated broadsheets, what tender concern there was for unfortunate victims of such attempts. It isn’t possible to reconstruct this even in one’s memory, just as one

49

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

cannot recall the full vividness of our interest in a highly significant war which broke out thirty years ago.

403. The most attractive form of metempsychosis is when we see ourselves reappear in someone else.

404. Professor Zauper’s German Poetics drawn from Goethe, as also the appendix to this study, Vienna 1822, do indeed make a gratifying impression on the poet; he feels as though he were walking past mirrors and sees himself portrayed in a favourable light.

405. And could this be any different? What our young friend experiences about us is of course action and deed, word and writing proceeding from us in happy moments which we are always glad to acknowledge as Our Own.

406. We very seldom satisfy ourselves; all the more consoling, therefore, to have satisfied others.

407. When we look back on our life we really only see it as something piecemeal, because our omissions and failures always surface first in our mind and dominate our actions and achievements.

408. Nothing of all this is apparent to the young man involved in the process; he sees, enjoys, makes use of the youth of a predecessor and in this way edifies himself from his own innermost being as though he had already at one time been what he now is.

409. Ina similar, indeed identical, way, I rejoice in the manifold echoes reaching me from foreign lands. Foreign nations are later in getting to know our youthful works; their young men, their older men, striving and active, see their own image mirrored in us; they come to realize that we too wanted what they now want; they draw us into their companionship and give us the illusion of youth returning.

50

A

FROM THE PERIODICAL ISSUES ON MORPHOLOGY

410. Scholarly knowledge is greatly retarded by our preoccupation with what is not worth knowing and with what is unknowable.

411. The higher form of empiricism relates to nature just as human reason relates to practical life.

412. When basic primitive phenomena appear unveiled to our percep- tion, we feel a kind of timidity, even fear. Sense-bound people take refuge in astonishment; but along comes reason, that busy pander hurrying to mediate in its own way between the noblest and the most vulgar instincts.

413. Artis the true mediator. To speak about art is an attempt to mediate the mediator, but all the same this has brought us much delight.

414. Reasons for deduction are comparable to reasons for arrangement: both must be thought through completely, or else they are worthless.

415. Similarly in the sciences you really know nothing, you always have to do, to act.

416. Every true insight is part of a sequence and leads to a sequence. It is a link in a great chain mounting creatively.

417. Scientific knowledge helps us mainly because it makes the wonder to which we are called by nature rather more intelligible; and also in that it gives our ever-heightened life new skills to avert what is damaging and to introduce what is useful.

418. People complain that scientific academics do not intervene boldly

enough in real life; that’s not their fault, however, the reason being the whole approach to science and dealing with it.

SI

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

FROMePH BePiiRa OW IC Ade ISSUES ON THE NAPURAL SOREN GES

Vol. II, issue 1: Old Ideas, Almost out of Date (1823)

419. When a corpus of knowledge is ready to become a science, a crisis must necessarily arise; for a difference emerges between those who separate what is particular and give a separate account of it, and those who keep the general in view while wanting to add and integrate what is particular. Now as scientific, ideological and more comprehensive treatment enlists more and more friends, patrons and collaborators, this process of separation at a higher stage is perhaps less marked but still noticeable enough.

Those whom I would like to call the universalists are convinced and imagine that everything is always and everywhere there, even though in infinitely varied and manifold shape, and is also discoverable; others, whom I will term singularists, will concede the main point in general, indeed they observe, define and teach according to this principle, but they always want to find exceptions where type is not particularly marked, and here they are quite right. Their fault is just that they misunderstand basic form where it is overlaid and deny it altogether when it is hidden. As both these methods of apprehension are basic and will eternally remain in opposition without either uniting or cancelling one another out, one should beware of all controversy and make a clear and bare statement of one’s convictions.

420. So I will repeat my own view: that at these higher stages one cannot know but must do, just as in a game there is little to know and everything to accomplish. Nature has given us the chessboard beyond which we cannot and would not wish to operate; nature has carved the counters whose value, moves and potentiality gradually become known to us: it is our part now to make moves which hold a promise of gain for us; everyone tries to do this in his own way and doesn’t relish interference. So let this happen and make it our chief concern to observe carefully where we all stand, how close to or how distant from

52

FROM THE PERIODICAL ISSUES ON THE NATURAL SCIENCES

one another, and then harmonize to the best of our ability with those who own the belief which we ourselves profess. Let us, moreover, remember that we are always dealing with an insoluble problem, and should firmly and faithfully register whatever comes up for discussion, more especially whatever goes against the grain; for this is precisely `- where we first become aware of what is problematical, this residing, of course, in the actual object of inquiry but even in the human factor, in people. I am not quite sure whether I myself will go on experimenting in this well-worked field, but I do reserve my right to go on paying attention and drawing attention to this or that development of an inquiry, to this or that step taken by an individual.

421. Man cannot well go on existing on his own and this is why he likes to join a party, because this is where he finds, if not tranquillity, at least composure and security.

422. Maybe there are people who are by nature not up to this or that business; precipitation and prejudice are, however, dangerous demons, unfitting the most capable person, biocking all effectiveness and paralys- ing free progress. This applies to worldly affairs, particularly, too, to scholarship.

423. Inthe realm of nature, the dominant factors are motion and activity, in the realm of freedom it is predisposition and will. Motion is eternal and is irresistibly in evidence on every propitious occasion. Factors of predisposition also develop naturally, but must first be put into practice by the will and then heightened by degrees. That is why one cannot be as sure about the spontaneous will as about independent action: the latter operates of its own accord, the former is operated on. For the will, if it is to be made perfect and effective, must be subject, in the moral realm, to conscience that does not err, but in the realm of art it complies with a rule that is nowhere formulated. Conscience has no need of an antecedent as it is self-contained and only concerned with its own inner world. Genius might be in the same case of needing no rule, being self-sufficient, laying down its own rule; but as its field of action is the outside world, it is in many ways conditioned by its

58

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

material and by time, with both of which there is bound to be difficulty. That is why everything connected with any art form, with its general management as with an individual poem, statue or painting, is so very curious and unpredictable.

424. It is a bad thing, happening, however, to quite a few observers, to make an immediate connection between an insight and a conclusion and to consider both as being equally valid.

425. The history of the sciences and of all that happens in their develop- ment shows us certain epochs which follow on, now in faster, now in slower sequence. A certain significant view, new or revived, is formu- lated; sooner or later it is recognized; it finds supporters, the result is passed on to students; it is taught and propagated and we note with regret that it doesn’t matter whether or not this view is true or false; both take the same course, are finally formulated as a phrase; both are imprinted in the memory as a dead word.

426. Error is more particularly perpetuated by works which hand on the truth and error of the day in encyclopaedic form. Science cannot be expounded in this fashion where what is known, believed, surmised is included; this is why works of this kind look very odd after fifty years.

427. Begin by instructing yourself, then you will receive instruction from others.

428. Theories usually result from the precipitate reasoning of an impatient mind which would like to be rid of phenomena and replaces them with images, concepts, indeed often with mere words. One senses, possibly also realizes, that this is a mere makeshift; but doesn’t passion and partiality always fall in love with makeshifts? And rightly so, because they are so greatly needed.

429. We attribute our circumstances now to God, now to the devil and are wrong in both cases: the conundrum lies in ourselves spawned as

54

FROM THE PERIODICAL ISSUES ON THE NATURAL SCIENCES

we are by two worlds. Colour is in the same case: now we look for it in light, now out in the cosmos, and we are unable to find it precisely where it is, in fact, at home.

430. A time will come when pathological experimental physics will be taught, and this will reveal in clear daylight all the sham argumentation which bypasses reason, surreptitiously wins conviction and, worst of all, completely prevents all practical progress. Phenomena must once and for all be removed from their gloomy empirical-mechanical-dogmatic torture chamber and submitted to the jury of plain common sense.

431. The fact that in his prismatic experiments Newton used the smallest possible opening, conveniently symbolizing a line to the ray of light, has brought incorrigible error into the world which will perhaps go on doing damage for centuries to come.

By this tiny hole Malus was led into wild theorizing, and had Seebeck been less circumspect, he would have been prevented from discovering the ultimate source of these phenomena, that is, entoptic figures and colours.

432. But what is really most extraordinary: even when a man has discovered the basic reason for the error, this does not mean that he has got rid of the error itself. A number of English scholars, especially Dr Reade, speak out passionately against Newton: the prismatic image, they say, is by no means the sun image, but that of the opening of our window shutters decorated with colour borders; that in the prismatic image there is no original green, this arises when blue and yellow merge so that a black line, just as a white one, could seem to be dissolved in colours, if one wants to use the term ‘dissolve’ in this instance. In short, all that we have been stating for years is now being similarly put forward by this good observer. But it so happens that the fixed idea of diverse refractability will not leave him, but he reverses it and is, if anything, even more caught up in this prejudice than his great master. Instead of being inspired by this new conviction and letting it release him from the chrysalis state, he tries to squeeze his grown and unfolded limbs back into the old husks of the pupa state.

55

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

433. Immediate perception of primeval phenomena makes us react with something akin to fear: we feel our inadequacy; it is only when they come alive through the eternal interplay of empiricism that we can react with joy.

434. The magnet isa primeval phenomenon where mere naming already serves as an explanation; that is how it becomes a symbol for all the rest for which we need not seek a name or words.

435. Everything that is alive surrounds itself with an atmosphere.

436. Exceptional men of the sixteenth and seventeenth century in themselves constituted an academy. When knowledge proliferated so tremendously, private individuals joined together so as to achieve as a body what was no longer within the capacity of a scholar working on his own. They kept well away from state ministers, princes and kings. How hard the hidden French scientific societies tried to do without Richelieu’s help! How the English Oxford and London Society resisted the influence of Charles H and his favourites!

But once the change had actually come about, and the sciences looked on themselves as state members of the state body, and were granted their due rank in processions and other celebrations, their higher purpose was soon lost to view; men paraded their own person, and the sciences, too, were draped in their little gowns and had on their little bonnets. I have given extensive examples of this kind of thing in my History of the Science of Colour. But whatever has been recorded in writing has been written so that it may continually be made actual.

437. It is given to few to comprehend nature and put it to direct use; somewhere between their perception and its application people like to invent a gossamer airy fabric which they carefully extend, forgetting the object and at the same time its use.

438. Similarly, it is not easily understood that things happen in the great sphere of nature exactly as they do in the smallest compass. If experience

forces it on people, they in the end put up with it. Straw, attracted by

$6

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

a rubbed piece of amber, is cognate to the most terrific thunderstorm, indeed, it is one and the same phenomenon. We concede this relation- ship between small and great in a few other cases, but the pure spirit of nature soon abandons us and the demon of artificial constructionism seizes hold of us and manages to assert its validity everywhere.

439. Nature has managed to keep enough freedom so as to prevent us from getting at it radically with our knowledge and science or actually cornering it.

440. It is hard to come to terms with the errors of the times: if you oppose them, you stand alone; if you allow yourself to be caught up in them, you get neither honour nor joy in the process.

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS (1829)

Thoughts about Art, Ethics and Nature in the Spirit of the Travellers

441. There’s nothing clever that hasn’t been thought of before — you’ve just got to try to think it all over again.

442. How can we learn self-knowledge? Never by taking thought but rather by action. Try to do your duty and you'll soon discover what you're like.

443. But what is your duty? The demands of the day.

444. The reasonable world is to be seen as a great individual not subject

to mortality and forever bringing about what is needed, in this way even mastering chance events.

$7

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

445. The longer I live, the more depressing I find the spectacle of a man, whose optimal function is to be a lord over nature so as to free himself and his fellow men from tyrannical necessity, doing the exact opposite of what he really wants to do, and all because of some preconceived false notion; and in the end, because the structure of the project as a whole has been ruined, he just muddles on miserably with

odd details.

446. Man of ability and action, be worthy of, and expect:

grace — from those who are great

favour — from the powerful

a helping hand — from those who are active and good affection — from the crowd

love — from an individual

447. When a dilettante has done what lies within his capacity to complete a work, he usually makes the excuse that of course it’s as yet unfinished. Clearly, it never can be finished because it was never properly started. The master of his art, by means of a few strokes, produces a finished work; fully worked out or not, itis already completed. The cleverest kind of dilettante gropes about in uncertainties and, as the work proceeds, the dubiousness of the initial structure becomes more and more apparent. Right at the end the faulty nature of the work, impossible to correct, shows up clearly and so, of course, the work can never be finished.

448. For true art there is no such thing as preparatory schooling, but there are certainly preparations; the best, however, is when the least pupil takes a share in the master’s work. Colour-grinders have turned into very good artists.

449. Copycat work, casually stimulating people’s natural activity in imitating an important artist who achieves with ease what is difficult, is quite a different matter.

450. We are quite convinced that it is essential for the artist to make

58

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

studies from nature; we won't however deny that it often grieves us to perceive the misuse of such praiseworthy endeavours.

451. We are convinced that the young artist should rarely, if at all, set out to do studies from nature without at the same time considering how he might round off every sheet and make a whole ofit, transforming this unit into a pleasing picture set within a frame, and offer it courteously to the amateur and the expert.

452. Much that is beautiful stands as an isolated entity in the world, but the spirit has to discover connections and thus to create works of art. The flower unfolds its full beauty only through the insect that clings to it, through the dewdrop that makes it glisten, through the calix from out of which it may be drawing its last sustenance. No bush, no tree whose charm inay not be enhanced by a neighbouring rock or brook, by a simple prospect in the distance. And so it is with human figures and so with animals of every kind.

453. The advantages accruing to a young artist in this way are indeed manifold. He learns to think out the best way of fitting together related things and, when he thus composes intelligently, he will, in the end, assuredly not lack what is termed invention, the capacity to develop a manifold whole out of single units.

454. And, as well as conforming to the tenets of art pedagogy, he gains the great advantage, by no means to be despised, of learning to create saleable pictures that are a pleasure and delight to the art lover.

455. A work of this kind need not be complete down to the last detail; ifit is well envisaged, thought out and finished, it is often more appealing to the art lover than a larger, more fully completed picture.

456. Let every young artist take a look at the studies in his sketch book

and portfolio and consider how many of these sheets he might have been able to make enjoyable and desirable in this way.

59

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

457. We are not talking about the higher regions of art which might of course also be discussed; this is no more than a warning to recall the artist from a devious path and point the way to higher regions.

458. Let the artist put this to a practical test, if only for half a year, and not make use of either charcoal or brush unless he has the firm intention of actually structuring a picture out of the natural object or scene confronting him. If he has inborn talent, what we intended by our comments will soon be revealed.

459. Tell me with whom you consort and I will tell you who you are; if I know how you spend your time, then I know what might become of you.

460. Every individual must think in his own personal way; for on his way he always finds a truth or a kind of truth which helps him get through life. But he mustn’t let himself go, he has-got to keep a check on himself; purely naked instinct is unseemly.

461. Absolute activity, of whatever kind, ultimately leads to bankruptcy.

462. In the works of man as in those of nature, what most deserves notice is his intention.

463. People are at a loss with regard to themselves and one another because they use means as ends, and then, because of sheer busyness, nothing whatever happens or perhaps, even worse, something which is disagreeable.

464. What we think out, what we undertake, should have achieved such perfect clarity and beauty that anything the world could do to it could only spoil it; this would leave us with the advantage of only having to adjust what has been misplaced and refashion what has been destroyed.

465. Whole, half- and quarter-errors are most difficult and wearisome to put right, to sort out.

60

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

466. Truth need not always take corporeal form; enough for it to be around in spiritual form, bringing about harmony as it floats on the breeze as a spiritual presence like the solemn-friendly sound of bells.

467. When I ask young German artists, even those who have spent some time in Italy, why they use such crudely bright colours, especially in their landscapes, and seem to shun anything like harmony, they are apt to answer boldly and cheerfully that this is precisely how they see nature.

468. Kant has drawn our attention to the fact that there is such a thing as a Critique of Reason, and that this, the highest faculty possessed by man, has cause to keep watch over itself. Let everyone judge for himself what great advantages the voice of Kant has brought him. I, for my part, would similarly like to urge that a Critique of the Senses should be worked out, if art, especially German art, is in any way to recover and to proceed and progress at a pleasing and lively pace.

469. Man, bom to be a creature of reason, nevertheless needs much education, whether this comes gradually by way of careful parents and tutors, by peaceful example or by stern experience. Similarly, there is such a thing as a born potential artist, but no one is born perfect. He may have an inborn clarity of vision, a happy eye for shape, proportion, movement: but without becoming aware of this lack, he may be without a natural instinct for composition in its higher aspects, for correct tonal proportion, for light, shade and colouring.

470. Now ifhe is not inclined to learn from more highly skilled contem- porary or earlier artists what he himself lacks in order to be a true artist, he will lag behind his own potential because of a wrong-headed idea that he is safeguarding his own originality; for we own not just what we are born with, but also what we can acquire, and this is what we are.

471. General notions and great conceit are always potential creators of shocking misfortune.

61

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

472. “You don’t play the flute just by blowing — you’ve got to move your fingers.’

473. Botanists have a plant-category which they call ‘Incompletae’; similarly one can say that there are incomplete and uncompleted people. These are the ones whose longings and strivings are out of proportion with what they actually do and what they achieve.

474. The least gifted man can be complete if he keeps within the limits of his capacities and skills, but real excellence is obscured, cancelled out and destroyed if there is not that absolutely essential sense of proportion. This disastrous lack is bound to crop up frequently in our own day; for who can possibly keep up with the demands of an exorbitant present, and that at maximum speed?

475. Only those people who are both clever and active, who are clear about their own capacities and can use them with moderation and common sense, will really get on in the world as it is.

476. A great failing: to see yourself as more than you are and to value yourself at less than your true worth. .

477. From time to time I meet a young man whom I wouldn’t wish different or improved in any way; but what worries me is that some of these people seem to me just the kind who let themselves drift along with the current of the stream of time, and this is where I keep wanting to point out that man is put at the helm of his own fragile craft precisely so that he may not follow the whim of the waves, the determination of his own insight.

478. But how is a young man independently to reach the insight that what everyone else pursues, approves and furthers may be reprehensible and damaging? Why shouldn’t he let himself and his own natural disposition go the same way?

62

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

479. The greatest evil of our time — which lets nothing come to fruition —is, I think, that one moment consumes the next, wastes the day within that same day and so is always living from hand to mouth without achieving anything of substance. Don’t we already have news-sheets for every point of the day! A clever man might well be able to slip in one or two more. In this way everything that anyone does, is working at or writing, indeed plans to write, is dragged out into the open. No one is allowed to be happy or miserable except as a pastime for the rest of the world, and so news rushes from house to house, from town to town, from one country to another, and, in the end, from one continent to the next, and all on the principle of speed and velocity.

480. As little as steam engines can be quelled, so little is this possible in the behavioural realm: the lively pace of trade, the rapid rush of paper-money, the inflated increase of debts made in order to pay off other debts, these are the monstrous elements to which a young man is now exposed. How good for him if nature has endowed him with a moderate and calm attitude so that he makes no disproportionate claims on the world nor yet allows it to determine his course!

481. But the spirit of the day threatens him in every sphere and nothing is more important than to make him realize early enough the direction in which his will should steer.

482. As one grows older, the most innocent talk and action grow in significance, and to those I see around me for any length of time I always try to point out the shades of difference between sincerity, frankness and indiscretion, and that there is really no difference between them, but just an intangible transition from the most harmless comment to the most damaging, and that this subtle transition has to be observed or indeed felt.

483. In this matter we have to use tact, else we run the risk of losing people’s favour without being in the least aware of this and precisely in the way we came by it. This we probably come to understand in the course of life, but only after we have paid a high price for our

63

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

experience, and from this we cannot, alas, spare those who come after us.

484. The relationship of the arts and the sciences to life is very varied

according to the way their temporal stages are related to the nature of

their epoch and a thousand other chance contingencies; which is why it isn’t easy to make sense of all this.

Poetry is most effective at the start of any set of circumstances, irrespective of whether these are quite crude, half-cultured, or when a culture is in the process of change as it begins to become aware of a foreign culture; in such cases one can claim the effect of the new is definitely to be felt.

485. Music at its best hardly needs to be new; indeed, the older it is, the more familiar to us, the more effective it can be.

486. The dignity of art perhaps appears most eminent in music because it has no material of a kind for which detailed accounting might be needed. It is all form and content and it heightens and ennobles all it expresses.

487. Music is either sacred or profane. What is sacred accords completely with its nobility, and this is where music most immediately influences life; such influence remains unchanged at all times and in every epoch. Profane music should be altogether cheerful.

488. Music of a kind that mixes the sacred with the profane is godless and shoddy music which goes in for expressing feeble, wretched, deplorable feelings, and is just insipid. For it is not serious enough to

be sacred and it lacks the chief quality of the opposite kind: cheerfulness.

469. The numinous nature of church music, the cheerfulness and playful- ness of folk melodies are the two pivots of true music. At these two focal points music always and inevitably leads either towards reverence or else to dance. Any mixture of the two is confusing, dilution is boring, and if music consorts with didactic or descriptive poems and texts of that kind, the result is coldness.

64

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

490. Plastic art is really only effective at its highest level; it is true that the middle zone can perhaps impress us for more reasons than one, but all middle-range art of this kind is more confusing than gladdening. Sculpture therefore has to discover subject-matter of interest and this is to be found in the portraits of people of some significance. But here, too, it has to reach a high degree of excellence if it is to be at the same time true and dignified.

491. Painting is the slackest and most easy-going of all the arts. The slackest because, on account of the material and subject-matter, we condone and enjoy much that is no more than skilled craftsmanship and can hardly be called art. In part it is also because a good technical performance, even though it may be dull, can be admired by the cultured as well as the uneducated, and need only remotely resemble art in order to be highly acceptable. True colours, surfaces and a true relationship of visible objects — all this is in itself pleasing; and, since the eye is in any case used to seeing everything, it does not find misshapen or mistaken form as objectionable as a jarring note is for the listening ear. We tolerate the worst portrayal because we are used to seeing even worse originals. So the painter need only be remotely artistic so as to find a bigger public than a musician of equal merit; the minor painter can at least always operate on his own, whereas the minor musician has to associate with others in order to achieve some sort of resonance by means of a combined musical effort.

492. The question ‘Are we to compare or not to compare when consider- ing works of art’ is one we would like to answer as follows: the trained connoisseur should make comparisons, for he has a general idea, a preconceived notion of what could be and should be achieved; the amateur, still involved in the process of being educated, can make the best progress if he does not compare but judges each achievement on its individual merit: this gradually forms an instinct and idea for the general situation. Comparison by the unknowing is really only a lazy and conceited way of avoiding judgement.

65

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

493. To find and to appreciate goodness everywhere is the sign of a love of truth.

494. The sign of a historical feeling for humanity is that, at the same time as we appreciate the merits and attainments of the present, we also take into account the merits of the past.

495. The best we get from history is that it rouses our enthusiasm. 496. Idiosyncrasy calls forth idiosyncrasy.

497. One has to remember that there are quite a lot of people who would like to say something significant without being productive, and then the most peculiar things see the light of day.

498. People who think deeply and seriously are on bad terms with the public.

499. If I’m to listen to someone else’s opinion, it must be put in a positive way; I have enough problematic speculations in my own head.

500. Superstition is innate in the human make-up, and when you think you have completely ousted it, it takes refuge in the strangest nooks and crannies and then suddenly emerges when one thinks one is tolerably safe.

501. We would know much more about things if we weren’t intent on discerning them too precisely. For, surely, an object can only be

comprehensible to us when viewed at an angle of forty-five degrees.

502. Microscopes and telescopes really only serve to confuse the unaided human senses.

503. I hold my peace about many things; for I don’t like tọ confuse people and am quite content if they are happy while I am cross.

66

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

504. Everything that liberates our mind without at the same time impart- ing self-control is pernicious.

505. The ‘what’ of a work of art interests people more than the ‘how’; they can grasp the subject-matter in detail but not the method as a whole. That is why they pick out individual passages, in which, if you observe closely, the total effect is not actually lost but remains unconscious to all.

506. And the question, too, ‘Where has the poet got it from?’ gets no further than the ‘what’; it helps no one to understand the ‘how’.

507. Imagination is only ordered and structured by poetry. There is nothing more awful than imagination devoid of taste.

508. Mannerism is an ideology gone wrong, a subjective ideology; that’s why, as a rule, it isn’t without wit.

509. The philologist is dependent on the congruence of what has been handed down in written form. There is a basic manuscript and this has real gaps, errors of transcription which lead to a break in the meaning and to other difficulties common to manuscript tradition. Then a second copy is found, a third one; collating these leads to growing perception of what makes sense and meaning in the transmitted material. Indeed, the philologist goes further and requires that it should increasingly reveal and structure its inner meaning and the congruence of its subject-matter without dependence on philological aides. This calls for a special degree of sensitive judgement, a special absorption in an author long dead and a certain amount of inventive power; one cannot, therefore, take it amiss if the philologist allows himself to make a judgement in matters of taste even if this doesn’t always succeed.

510. The poet is dependent on representation, the climax of which is reached when it vies with reality, that is, when the descriptions are so full of living power that everyone can see them as being actually present. At the summit of its excellence poetry appears as something completely

67

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

external; the more it withdraws into the inner realm, the more it is on its way towards sinking. The kind of poetry which concentrates on the inner realm without giving it outward substance or without allowing the outward to be perceived through the inward — both are the last steps from which poetry steps down into ordinary life.

511. Oratory is dependent on all the advantages of poetry, on all its rights. It takes possession of these and misuses them in order to get hold of certain outer momentary advantages, whether moral or immoral, in civic life.

512. Literature is the fragment of fragments; only the least amount of what has happened and has been spoken was written down, the least of what has been recorded in writing has survived.

513. Although Lord Byron’s talent is wild and uncomfortable in its structure, hardly anyone can compare with him in natural truth and grandeur. l

514. The really important value of folksong, so called, is that its themes are taken directly from nature. But the educated poet too might well avail himself of this advantage if only he knew how to set about it.

515. But the advantage inherent in folksong is that natural people, as distinct from the educated, are on better terms with what is laconic.

516. Shakespeare is dangerous reading for talents in the process of formation: he forces them to reproduce him, and they imagine they are producing themselves.

517. Nobody can make judgements about history except those who have experienced history as a part of their own development. This applies to whole nations. The Germans have only been able to judge literature since the point they themselves have had literature.

68

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

518. One is really only alive when one enjoys the good will of others.

519. Piety is not an end but a means to attain by the greatest peace of mind the highest degree of culture.

520. This is why we may say that those who parade piety as a purpose and an aim mostly turn into hypocrites.

521. ‘When one is old one has to do more than when one was young.’

522. A duty absolved still feels like an unpaid debt, because one can never quite live up to one’s expectations.

523. Human failings are only descried by an unloving person; that is why, in order to realize them, one has to become unloving oneself, but not more than is strictly to the purpose.

524. It is our greatest good fortune to have our failings corrected and our faults adjusted.

525. If you can read, you should understand; if you can wnite, you have to know something; if you can believe, you ought to comprehend; if you desire, you will feel an obligation; if you demand, you will not get what you want; and if you are experienced, you ought to make yourself

useful.

526. We only recognize the authority of those who are useful to us. We acknowledge the duke because we see our property secure under his aegis. We expect his protection in the face of external and internal contingencies that are untoward.

527. The brook is the miller’s friend, useful to him and happy to rush

over his wheels; no point, surely, in slow, indifferent progress along the valley.

69

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

528. One who is content just to experience life and act accordingly has all the truth he needs. This is the wisdom of the growing child.

529. Theory pure and simple is no use except in that it makes us believe in the interconnection of phenomena.

530. By application everything abstract is brought within the capacity of human reason, and this is how action and observation lead human reason to the power of abstraction.

531. He who demands too much, who rejoices in what is complex, is exposed to the danger of aberrations.

532. We mustn’t scorn thinking that proceeds by way of analogies: analogy has the advantage of not closing doors or in fact aiming at any ultimate solution; the kind of inductive thinking, on the other hand, which has a preconceived purpose in view and is working towards it is damaging in that it sweeps both falsehood and truth along with it.

533. Ordinary viewing, a right conception of earthly matters, is the heritage of general human reason; pure viewing of what is external and internal is very rare.

534. The former finds expression in practical ways, in immediate action; the latter is symbolical and expressed chiefly in mathematics, numbers and formulas, in discourse, as something wholly original, in tropes, as the poetry of genius, as proverbial utterance of human reason.

535. What is remote from us influences us by means of transmission. In its usual form it may be described as historical; a higher form is related to the imagination, is mythical. If we look behind this form for a third factor, for some further meaning, it is transformed into mysticism. Moreover, it easily becomes sentimental so that we can only assimilate what we find congenial.

70

— n e

—

eS ee a

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

536. Ways of effective progress to be looked out for if we really want to get on are those of a kind that

prepare,

accompany,

reinforce,

help along,

further,

strengthen,

hinder,

confirm.

537. In meditation as in action we must make a distinction between what is accessible and what is inaccessible; failing this, little can be accomplished either in life or in knowledge.

538. ‘Le sens commun est le génie de l’humanité.’ [Common sense is the genius of humanity.’|

539. Common sense, which is said to be the genius of mankind, must first of all be considered in the ways it finds expression. If we consider how mankind uses it, we find the following:

Mankind is conditioned by needs; if these are not satisfied, there is impatience; if they are, there is indifference. Human kind therefore moves between these two states and will use his understanding to satisfy needs; when this is done his task is to replenish the voids of indifference. If this remains within the most proximate limits, he manages this successfully. But if needs arise and go beyond the ordinary sphere, plain common sense is no longer adequate, it no longer acts as a ‘genius’; the region of error opens up before mankind.

540. Nothing unreasonable happens, nothing that understanding or chance cannot put right again; nothing reasonable that a lack of under-

standing, or else chance, cannot lead astray.

541. Every great idea, as soon as it makes its appearance, has a tyrannical effect, and that is why the advantages it brings are all too soon transformed

71

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

into disadvantages. One can therefore defend and praise every institution by pointing back to its beginnings and explaining that everything valid at the beginning is still valid now.

542. Lessing, a man who was unwillingly hemmed in by all kinds of limitations, lets one of his characters say: “There’s no need for anyone A witty man said: “He who wills, has to.’ A third one, admittedly an educated man, added: ‘He who understands also wills.’

TIES

to “have to”.

And so people assumed that the whole sphere of understanding, willing and having to, had been settled for good. But, on the whole, a person’s understanding, of whatever kind it may be, also determines what he does and what he does not do; which is why nothing is more frightful than to see ignorance in action.

543. There are two peaceful powers: law and decency.

544. Law deals with guilt, the police with what is fitting. Law considers and decides, the police surveys and commands. Law is concerned with the individual, the police with the community.

545. The history of learning is a great fugue in the course of which the voices of nations gradually emerge.

546. There are some problems in the natural sciences which cannot be adequately discussed without involving the help of metaphysics; not just, however, a school and word-wisdom, but the kind that existed before, with and after physics, that now is and will be hereafter.

547. Authoritative confirmation that something has in fact already hap- pened, been said or decided in the past, is of great value; but only the

pedant insists on authority at every juncture.

548. We honour an old basic foundation, but must not relinquish our right to structure a completely new one elsewhere at some other time.

549. Stand firm where you are — a maxim which is all the more necessary

72

E -

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

than ever now that people are impelled to form great parties while, in another way, each individual is doing his utmost to put himself across according to his own point of view.

550. It is always better for us to say straight out what we think without wanting to prove much; for all the proofs we put forward are really just variations on our own opinions, and people who are otherwise minded listen neither to one nor to the other.

551. As I grow in knowledge of the natural sciences and become increasingly familiar and attached to them in their day by day progress, I am often struck by the fact that both their progressive and regressive movement take place simultaneously. May I just add one point for now: that we do not manage to get rid of even admitted errors in science. The reason for this is an open secret.

552. I call it an error when some event or other is wrongly analysed, wrongly associated, wrongly deduced. It may, however, happen in the course of new experience and thinking that a phenomenon is consequentially associated, rightly deduced. We’re happy to accept that, but without specially valuing it, being quite content to allow the error to persist alongside; and I know ofa little store-house full of errors kept in careful custody.

553. As people are, after all, not really interested in anything but their own opinion, everybody who formulates an opinion looks right and left for ways and means to support his own morale and that of others. We make use of truth as long as it serves a purpose; what is false, however, is seized upon with emotional rhetoric as soon as it can for the moment serve as a partial but dazzling argument, as a stop-gap which can apparently confer unity on the bits and pieces. Discovering this was annoying to begin with, then I was grieved about it and now I feel a kind of malicious joy: I have promised myself never again to

reveal a procedure of this kind.

554. Everything that exists is an analogue of all existing things; that is

73

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

why existence always and at the same time looks to us both separate and interlocked. If you pursue this analogy too closely, everything coincides identically; if you avoid it, all is scattered into infinity. In both cases contemplation stagnates, either as hyperactive, or else as done to death.

555. Reason is dependent on what is coming into being, understanding depends on what is already there; the former is unconcerned about ‘what for?’, the latter doesn’t ask ‘where from?’ Reason rejoices in the process of development; understanding wants to keep hold of everything so as to put it to use.

556. It is characteristic of man, an innate quality closely textured into the fabric of his being, that what is closest to him does not suffice for cognition. This is because every phenomenon which we ourselves observe is for that moment whatever is closest to us, and we can expect it to be self-explanatory if we tackle it with determination.

557. But people will not learn this as it goes against their nature; and that is why even educated people, when they recognize some truth or other in a precise place, cannot resist linking it not just with what is close by, but also with what is furthest away and most remote, a process leading to error upon error. But there is only one way a phenomenon nearby is related to a distant one, namely, that everything relates to a few great laws which are everywhere made manifest.

558. What is general? The individual case. What is specific? Millions of cases.

559. Analogy must guard against two deviations: firstly indulging in wit,

which dissolves it altogether; or else donning a cloak of metaphor and image, which, however, does less damage.

74

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

560. Scholarship must not tolerate either mythology or legends. Leave these to the poets whose vocation it is to put them to use for the world’s profit and joy. The scholarly man limits himself to the nearest, clearest present time. If, however, he has an occasional urge to be rhetorical, let him not be denied this indulgence.

561. In order to save my reason, I view all phenomena as independent units and try to isolate each from the other by sheer force; then I view them as correlatives and they combine to form vital structures. I apply this in the first instance to nature; but it can also be a way of looking at things which proves fruitful when applied to the latest turbulence of world history all around us.

562. Everything we call invention, discovery in a higher sense, is the significant practice, activation of an original instinct for truth, long developed in secret, which suddenly and at lightning speed turns into a fruitful perception. Developing from within, it is an outward mani- festation which affords man a presentiment of his likeness to God. It is a synthesis of world and spirit conferring the most blissful assurance of the eternal harmony of existence.

563. Man must persist in the belief that the incomprehensible is, in fact, comprehensible; else he would cease to do research.

564. Each specific fact which can be made use of in any way is under- standable. In this way what is incomprehensible can become useful.

565. There is a delicate form of empiricism which enters into the closest union with its object and is therefore transformed into an actual theory. But this heightening of spiritual capacity belongs to a highly civilized epoch.

566. Censorious observers and capricious theorists are the most revolting

of all; their experiments are petty and complicated, their hypotheses abstruse and odd.

75

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

567. There are pedants who are at the same time rascals and these are the worst of all.

568. You don’t have to travel all round the world in order to understand that the sky is blue everywhere.

569. The general and the particular coincide; the particular is the general made manifest under different conditions.

570. You don’t have to have seen or experienced everything for yourself: but if you want to trust another person and his descriptions, remember that you are now dealing with three factors: with the matter itself and two subjects.

571. Fundamental characteristic of the living unit: to separate, to reunite, to expand into generality, to remain individual, to transform and to specify itself; and because what is alive can be made manifest in a thousand conditions, it can come to the fore and disappear, solidify and melt away, grow rigid and flow freely, expand and contract. And because all these effects happen at the same moment of time, each and every event can occur simultaneously. Appearance and disappearance, creation and destruction, birth and death, joy and sorrow, all is effective through and together with everything else, in the same sense and in the same measure; and this is why even the most specific thing that occurs is always revealed as an image and a parallel of what is most general.

572. As the whole of existence is an eternal process of separation and union, it also follows that human beings, watching and considering this tremendous process, will be now separating, now uniting.

573. Physics and mathematics must present themselves as distinct and separate from one another. The former must maintain decisive independence and attempt with all loving, respectful, devout endeavour to penetrate fully into nature and its sacred life, quite unconcerned with what mathematics, for its part, is achieving and doing. The latter, on the other hand, must declare itself independent of ali outer things,

76

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

follow its own great intellectual way and develop itself more perfectly than is possible if, as heretofore, it continues to deal with what is on hand, trying to extract something from it or make some adaptation.

574. Scientific research needs a categorical imperative just as it is needed in the sphere of morality; but we must remember that this doesn’t bring us to a conclusion but only to a beginning.

575. Everything factual is already theory: to understand this would be the greatest possible achievement. The blueness of the sky reveals the basic law of chromatics. Don’t go looking for anything beyond phenomena: they are themselves what they teach, the doctrine.

576. There is much certainty in the sciences provided we don’t allow ourselves to be misled by exceptions and know how to honour problems.

577. If the primordial phenomenon finally reassures me, it is but resig- nation in another form; however, it is very different if resignation comes at the frontier of human thinking or within the hypothetical confines of my own narrow individuality.

578. When one looks at Aristotle’s problems, one is astonished by his gift to notice and observe, and by the host of things for which the Greeks had an eye. But they commit the great fault of precipitation because they immediately pass from the phenomenon to its explanation, which leads to quite inadequate theoretical pronouncements. This, however, is the common fault, still committed nowadays.

579. Hypotheses are the cradle songs with which a teacher rocks his pupils to sleep; a faithful observer who reflects to some purpose is always more and more aware of his limitations and realizes that the wider the extent of his knowledge, the more problems make their appearance.

580. Our fault is that we cast doubt on what is certain and would like

to pin down what is uncertain. My maxim in my research about nature is: keep hold of what is certain and watch out for what is uncertain.

77

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

581. I call it an excusable hypothesis when we are, as it were, positing it for fun so as to invite refutation from nature in earnest.

582. How could a man claim to be a master of his subject if he taught nothing that’s unnecessary!

583. The craziest thing is that everyone imagines he has got to pass on what people have imagined they knew.

584. A didactic lecture is expected to provide certainty as the learner doesn’t want to acquire doubtful information; this means that the teacher may not abandon any problem or possibly circumvent it at a distance. There must be immediate, fixed certainty (‘bepaalt’ [marked with pales] as the Dutchman puts it); then one imagines for a while that the unknown space is a sure possession, until someone else uproots the pales and then immediately sets them up again, fixing them closer together or else further apart.

585. Lively questioning about cause, confusing cause and effect, reposing in a wrong theory — all this does great, irreparable damage.

586. If some people hadn’t felt obliged to repeat what is untrue simply because they had at one point maintained it, they would have turned into quite different people.

587. What is false has the advantage that it can always be the subject of gossipy chat; what is true has to be put to immediate use, else it isn’t there.

588. He who fails to understand what a boon truth in the practical sphere can be subjects it to critical fuss and bother so as somewhat to

embellish his own wrong-headed, laborious procedures.

589. The Germans, and they are not alone in this, have the gift of making the sciences inaccessible.

78

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

590. The English are masters at putting discovery to immediate use so that it leads to new discovery and fresh achievement. Now ask why they are everywhere ahead of us.

591. Aman who thinks indulges a curious habit of replacing an unsolved problem with a fantasy he can’t get rid of even after the problem has been solved and truth made evident.

592. It takes a special turn of mind to grasp formless reality in its essential nature and to distinguish it from the figments of the imagination which, all the same, thrust themselves urgently on our attention with a certain semblance of reality.

593. When contemplating nature, whether in great things or small, I have constantly asked the question: is it the object which is here declaring itself, or is it you yourself? And this is also my stance to predecessors and fellow workers.

594. Each and every person really looks on the world in its finished, regulated, formed, perfect aspect as no more than an element out of which he is trying to create a special world, one suited to his own measure. Competent people seize on the world without hesitation and seek to act as things come; others hang back, some even doubt its existence.

Anyone really penetrated by this basic truth would seek no quarrel with anyone else, but would only consider another man’s view, as also his own, to be no more than just a phenomenon. For it is an almost daily experience that someone can think with ease along lines impossible for another person; and this not only in matters having any influence for weal or woe, but in matters which are of complete indifference to

us.

595. We know what we know really only for ourselves. If I talk to someone else about what I believe I know, he forthwith imagines he knows it a lot better, and over and over again I have to turn back into myself with my knowledge.

7

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

596. Truth is constructive; error is unproductive, it only constrains us.

597. Man finds himself in the midst of effects and cannot resist inquiring into causes; taking the line of least resistance, he fixes on the nearest as the best, and this pacifies him; for this is more particularly the way of human reason.

598. When you see some evil you proceed to immediate action, you make an immediate attack to cure the symptom.

599. Reason is exclusively concerned with what is alive; the already created world, which is the concern of geognosy, is dead. This is why there can be no such thing as geology, because there is nothing here for reason to do.

600. If I find a scattered skeleton, I can gather up and structure the pieces; for eternal reason speaks to me here by an analogy, be it even that of the ground sloth.

601. We cannot envisage as coming into being what is no longer involved in this process; what has already come into being is beyond our understanding.

602. Vulcanism in its general new form is really a bold attempt to make a connection between the present incomprehensible world and an unknown world that has vanished.

603. The forces of nature produce the same or at least similar effects in different ways.

604. Nothing is more disagreeable than a majority; for it consists of a few powerful people in the lead, rogues who are adaptable, weak people who assimilate with the rest, and the crowd that trundles along behind without the slightest notion of what it’s after.

80

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

605. Mathematics, like dialectics, is an organ of the inner higher intelli- gence; in practice it is an art, like oratory. Nothing is of value to them both except form: content is a matter of indifference. Mathematics may be calculating pennies or guineas, rhetoric defending truth or falsehood, it’s all the same to both of them.

606. But here all depends on the nature of the person engaged in such an occupation, practising an art of this kind. A really incisive lawyer defending a just cause, a thoroughly perceptive mathematician contem- plating the star-filled sky are both god-like.

607. What is exact about mathematics except exactitude? And this, is it not the result of an innate sense of truth?

608. Mathematics cannot remove prejudice, is unable to appease party bias, has no power in the whole moral domain.

609. A mathematician is only perfect in so far as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth; only on this condition will he make the impression of someone thorough, transparent, circumspect, clean, clear, attractive, indeed elegant. It takes all this to make him resemble Lagrange.

610. It is not language in itself that is correct, effective, graceful; it is the spiritembodied within language; so itis not a matter ofan individual’s power of choice whether he wants to imbue his calculations, his speeches or poems with desirable qualities: the question is: has nature blessed him with the intellectual and ethical qualities working towards this end? In the intellect: the capacity to contemplate and perceive; in the ethical realm: the power to repudiate the wicked demons who can frustrate his efforts to give the place of honour to truth.

611. The desire to explain what is simple by what is complex, what is

easy by what is difficult, is a calamity affecting the whole body of science, known, it is true, to men of insight, but not generally admitted.

81

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

612. An exact inspection of physics will show that the phenomena, as also the experiments, on which it is built up vary in value.

613. Everything depends on the primary original experiments, and the chapter built up on this basis stands safe and firm. But there are also secondary experiments, tertiary ones and so on; concede them equal authority, and they only confuse what was made clear by the first.

614. It does great damage to the sciences, indeed, everywhere, that people who have no capacity for abstract thinking make bold to theorize, not grasping the fact that however much knowledge they have, this does not entitle them to theorize. Initially they may well set to work with laudable common sense, but this has its limits; transgress them, and even common sense runs the risk of becoming absurd. The territory

and inherited portion assigned to it is the area of doing and acting.

Common sense engaged in activity will rarely go astray; more complex thinking, inference and judgement are not, however, its business.

615. To begin with, experience is of use to science, then it does damage because experience leads to an awareness of law and exception. Drawing the average between them by no means results in truth.

616. Truth, so it is said, is situated at the central point between two opposing views. Not at all! The problem itself lies between the two, that which is beyond our range of vision, eternally active life, contemplated in repose.

From Makarie’s Archive 617. One cannot and may not reveal secrets about the way people lead their lives; there are stumbling blocks ofa kind to trip up every traveller.

The poet, however, points to the significant place along the road.

618. It wouldn’t be worthwhile reaching the age of seventy if the sum total of the world’s wisdom were folly before God.

82

FROM WILHELM MEISTER *5 JOURNEYMAN YEARS

619. Truth is god-like: it is not immediately perceptible; we are obliged to guess it from its manifestations.

620. The true pupil learns how to develop the unknown from the known and gets close to his master.

621. But people lack the capacity to develop the unknown from the known; for they don’t know that their reason plays similar tricks on them as nature herself.

622. For the gods teach us to imitate their very own work; but we only know what we ourselves are doing, without, however, realizing what it is We are imitating.

623. Allis like, all unlike; all is useful and harmful, eloquent and dumb, reasonable and unreasonable. And what people profess about individual matters is often contradictory.

624. For law has been laid down by mankind on itself without knowledge of the subject of legislation; but nature was set in order by all the gods.

625. What man has laid down just doesn’t fit, be it right or wrong; but what the gods lay down is always in place, right or wrong.

626.1, however, want to show that the known arts of man are like natural occurrences which proceed openly or in secret.

627. Prophecy is an art of this kind. It describes what is hidden within what is apparent, the future within the present, life within what is dead and the sense of what is senseless.

628. So the instructed man always rightly understands man’s nature, the uninstructed sees it now in one way, now in another, and everyone mimes it in his own way.

629. When the union between a man and a woman leads to a boy child,

83

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

an unknown entity results from something known. When, on the other hand, the boy’s dark spirit absorbs clearly distinct things, he grows into a man and learns to recognize the future from out of what is here and now present.

630. What is immortal is not comparable with what is mortal yet alive; but what is merely alive is capable of understanding. Thus the stomach knows very well when it is hungry and thirsty.

631. This is the respective roles of the art of divination and of human nature. And the man of understanding can come to right terms with either, while the man of limited vision sees them now in one way now in another.

632. At the blacksmith’s forge iron is made malleable by using bellows on the fire and removing superfluous nourishment from the iron stave; but once that stave has been cleared it is beaten and forced, and, nourished by water coming from outside, it regains its strength. This is what happens to man through the agency of his teacher.

633. ‘As we are convinced that he who surveys the world of the intellect and apprehends the beauty of its author’s intellect may well also take due note of its father who is exalted above all understanding, we therefore try to involve all our faculties in the attempt to realize and to express on our own account — in so far as such matters can be clarified — how we may contemplate the beauty of its spirit and of the cosmos.’

634. ‘So let us assume that two blocks of stone are placed side by side, the one left in its crude state without artistic fashioning, the other formed by art into a statue of a god or a man. If godly, it might represent one of the graces or the muses; if human, it need not be a specific person, but rather a creation in which art has concentrated all

beauty.’

635. ‘But to you the stone which art has fashioned into beautiful form will immediately appear as something beautiful; not, however, as stone

84

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

— else the other block would also be seen as beautiful — but because of the form given to it by art.’

636. ‘The material, however, did not have a form like this, but this was present earlier in the man’s thinking before it got as far as the stone. Yet it was in the artist not because he had eyes and hands but because he was endowed with the gift of art.’

637. ‘And this means that even greater beauty exists in art itself, because it is not the form latent in art which comes across into the stone; the form stays there and another lesser and derived beauty emerges which does not remain a self-contained entity, nor yet as the artist would have wished it to be, but exists only to the extent to which the material has complied with the art that fashioned it.’

638. ‘If, however, art actually manages to create that which it is and what it contains, and makes visible a beauty in harmony with reason according to which it always operates, it is indeed art of greater and more excellent beauty, more perfect than anything that appears externally.’

639. ‘Andso, in that form, becoming apparent by entering into a material already diffused outwardly, it is weaker than that which is concentrated in a single entity. For what is distanced from itself is dispersed from its own self: strength leaves strength, warmth leaves warmth, power leaves power, and so, too, beauty leaves beauty. Hence that which is at work must be more excellent than that which has been worked. For it is not “un-music” but music that makes the musician, and music which is beyond the senses brings forth music accessible to the senses.’

640. ‘But if anyone were to despise the arts because they imitate nature, one can only reply that natural objects are themselves imitation, and, furthermore, that the arts do not precisely imitate what the eye sees, but go back to that fundamental principle of reason which constitutes nature and according to which it acts.’

641. ‘Furthermore, the arts bring forth much out of themselves and, on

85

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

the other hand, add some features lacking to perfection as they contain beauty within themselves. Thus Phidias was able to create the form of a god, even though he was not imitating any model visible to the senses, but was conceiving a god in his own imagination — as Zeus himself might appear if he became visible to our eyes.’

642. You cannot blame idealists of ancient and modern times for so vigorously urging people to mark well the one single unity from which all things spring and to which everything is, it seems, to return. For, of course, the vivifying and ordering principle is so straitened in its manifestation that it scarcely knows how to save itself. On the other hand, however, we also go short if we force back the forming principle and the higher form itself into a single unity which is in the course of vanishing before our outer and inner apprehension.

643. We human beings are entirely dependent on extension and move- ment; it is in these two general forms that all other forms, especially those perceptible to the senses, are made manifest. A spiritual form, however, is in no way lessened when it is made outwardly apparent, provided that its emergence is a true generation, a truly new birth. What is generated is not less good than its generator; indeed, it is the advantage of living generation that the end-product can be more excellent than what generates it.

644. It would be of real importance to develop and illustrate this matter in an essentially practical way. But a circumstantial, logically sequent exposition might well make excessive demands on the listeners’ attention.

645. You can’t get rid of what really belongs to you, even if you throw it away.

646. The latest philosophy of our western neighbours is a witness to the fact that, however he acts, a man, and even whole nations, will always revert to their own innate tendencies. And how could this be otherwise, as this determines his nature and his whole way of life?

86

ae

| vow

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

647. The French have renounced materialism and have conceded rather more spirit and life to primitive beginnings; they have freed themselves from sensualism and have allowed the depths of human nature some kind of intrinsic development; they allow for the validity of productive power and do not try to explain all art by the imitation of externally perceived objects. May they persevere in such directions.

648. There can be no such thing as an eclectic philosophy, but there can be eclectic philosophers.

649. But an eclectic is everyone who, from whatever exists and is happening around him, makes his own the things he finds congenial to his nature; and this context validly includes all that can be called. culture and progress in a theoretical and practical sense.

650. It follows that two eclectic philosophers could turn into the greatest opponents if they are antagonistic to one another, and each, for his part, picks out whatever is congenial to him in every traditional system. of philosophy. Just look round ang you’ll find that this is the way every man always acts and so can’t imagine why he is unable to convert others to his own way of thinking.

651. If you look more closely, you find that even the historian does not easily see history as historical; for each writer of history always wnites as if he had himself been there at the time, and not about what actually was in the past and moved people. Even the writer of a chronicle points more or less to the limitations, the characteristics of his town, his monastery or his age.

652. It is rare even for a man of the greatest age to come to see himself as historical, or for his contemporaries to be seen as historical by him; the result is that there is no one left with whom he is either inclined or able to enter into argument.

87

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

653. Various proverbs of the Ancients which one is in the habit of repeating to oneself had a completely different significance from that which later ages would like to give them.

654. The saying that no one unacquainted with geometry, a stranger to geometry, should enter the Philosophers’ school does not, of course, mean that one must be a mathematician in order to be a sage.

655. Geometry is here understood in its initial elements as we have it in Euclid and as we let every beginner start it. It is, moreover, the most perfect preparation, indeed introduction, to philosophy.

656. When the boy begins to grasp that a visible point must be preceded by an invisible one, that the shortest way between two points is already thought of as a line before the pencil draws it on the paper, he feels a certain pride and pleasure. And quite rightly; for the source of all thinking has been opened up to him, idea and realization, ‘potentia et actu’, has become clear to him; the philosopher has nothing new to tell him, the basis of all thinking has dawned on the geometer within his

own sphere.

657. If we take the significant dictum ‘Know yourself’, and consider it, we mustn’t interpret it from an ascetical standpoint. It does not by any means signify the kind of self-knowledge advocated by our modern hypochondriacs, humorists and ‘Heautontimorumens’ [self-torturers], but quite simply means: pay some attention to yourself, watch what you are doing so that you come to realize how you stand vis-à-vis your fellows and the world in general. This needs no psychological self-torture; any capable person knows and appreciates this. It is good advice and of the greatest practical advantage to everyone.

658. The great thing about the Ancients, especially the Socratic school, is that they set before us the sources and guidelines of all life and action, not for the purpose of idle speculation, but as a call to life and deeds.

659. If our teaching in schools always continues to point to Antiquity

88

= -_——_ =

Si /

FROM WILHELM MEISTER ’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

and promotes the teaching of the Greek and Latin languages, we can congratulate ourselves that these studies, so essential for any higher culture, will never suffer decline.

660. For if we look upon Antiquity with the firm intention of educating ourselves, we are rewarded by the feeling that this is really the beginning of our true humanity.

661. The Schoolman trying his hand at writing and speaking Latin sees himself as more elevated and distinguished than he is allowed to be in his everyday life.

662. In the face of Antiquity any mind sensitive to poetical and artistic creation feels transported to the most delightful and ideal state of nature; and, right up to the present day, the songs of Homer have the power to deliver us, if only for brief moments, from the fearsome load with which tradition has weighed us down over many thousands of years.

663. As Socrates made an appeal to moral man so that he might quite simply become somewhat clearer about himself, so too Plato and Aristotle looked on nature as competent individuals: the former seeking to adapt himself by spirit and temperament, the latter to win it by analytical insight and method. And so every approach we can make to these three philosophers, as a whole or in detail, is an event that fills us with the greatest joy and always furthers our education in the most positive way.

664. If we are to rescue ourselves from the boundless multiplicity, atomization and complexity of the modern natural sciences and get back to the realm of simplicity, we must always consider the question: how would Plato have reacted to nature, fundamentally one unity as it still is, how would he have viewed what may now appear to us as its greater complexity?

665. For we think we can definitely assume that we can attain to the final ramifications of cognition in the same organic way, and that from

89

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

this position we can gradually build up and consolidate the summit of every kind of knowledge. However, we shall have to examine day by day how the spirit of the age we live in either furthers or obstructs our effort, if we are not to dismiss what is useful and absorb what is harmful to our endeavours.

666. The eighteenth century is praised for mainly concentrating on analysis; this leaves for the nineteenth century the task of discovering the false syntheses still obtaining and of making a renewed analysis of their content.

667. There are only two true religions: one where the numinous in and all around us is acknowledged and worshipped without any form, the other where the form is of the greatest beauty. Everything intermediate is idolatry.

668. It cannot be denied that the Reformation was an attempt by the spirit to free itself; enlightenment about Greek and Roman Antiquity brought a longing for a freer, more decent and becoming kind of life. This desire was heightened by the heart’s longing to return to a certain simple state of nature and by the imagination’s quest for a concentrated focus.

669. All the saints were suddenly banished from heaven, and man’s senses, thoughts and feelings were directed away from a heavenly mother and her tender child towards a grown man intent on moral action and suffering unjustly; he was then transfigured as a demi-god and later acknowledged and venerated as true God.

670. His background was the creator’s whole extended universe; spiritual influence emanated from him, his suffering was seized upon as a model

and his transfiguration as the pledge of everlasting life.

671. Just as incense refreshes the life of an ember, so prayer refreshes the hopes of the heart.

90

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

672. | am convinced that the Bible becomes more and more beautiful the more one understands it, that is, the more one realizes and sees that every word which we take as being of general application and as special for ourselves had an individual, particular and immediate relevance according to certain conditions and circumstances of time and place.

673. If we look closely, we still have to reform ourselves every day and protest against others, even if not in a religious sense.

674. We have the inescapable, utterly serious intention, renewable day by day, to grasp and understand the word as a most immediate meeting point with what we feel, see, think, experience, imagine and consider reasonable.

675. Let everyone examine himself and he will find this much more difficult than one might think; for unfortunately people see words as surrogates: they think and know better than what they actually manage to put into words.

676. But let us try to eliminate as far as possible what might insinuate itself as false, inappropriate, inadequate in ourselves and in others, and let us do this by steady endeavour, clarity and uprightness.

677. Advancing years bring greater trials. 678. When I have to cease being moral, I am left without power.

679. Censorship and freedom of the press will always be at loggerheads. The man of power demands and imposes censorship, the lesser man asks for freedom of the press. In his plans and activities, the former does not want to be hindered by clamorous contradictory attitudes, but, rather, obeyed; while the latter wants to voice his reasons so as to legitimize his disobedience. This, you will find, is the universal rule.

680. But it should also be noted here that the weaker and suffering man, in his own way, also tries to suppress freedom of the press, namely

9I

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

when he is himself engaged in conspiracy, and wants to avoid being betrayed.

681. One is never deceived, one deceives oneself.

682. We needa word in our language which, in the way that ‘childhood’ relates to child, expresses the relationship of the concept ‘peoplehood’ to ‘people’. The tutor must listen to and hear ‘childhood’, not ‘the child’; the legislator and regent must hear ‘peoplehood’, not ‘the people’. The former always voices the same thing, is reasonable, consistent, clear and true; the latter, because of much wanting, never knows what it wants. And in this sense law can be and should be the voice of the will of ‘peoplehood’. A will never formulated by the crowd, but heard by the understanding listener, satisfied by one who is reasonable and gladly appeased by the good ruler.

683. We don’t ask by what right we rule: we simply rule. We are not concerned whether people have any right to depose us: we just take care that they are not tempted to do it.

684. We wouldn’t object if death could be abolished; but abolishing the death penalty will be difficult to put across. If it is abolished, we shall occasionally reinstate it.

685. If society gives up the right to make use of the death penalty, self-help immediately takes over: vendetta knocks at the door.

686. All laws are made by the old and by men. Young people and womenfolk want the exception, the old want the rule.

687. It is not the discerning man who governs, but discernment; not the reasonable man, but reason.

688. When you praise someone, you are putting yourself on a par with

him.

92

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

689. Knowledge is not enough, we have to apply it; wanting is not enough, there has to be action.

690. There is no such thing as patriotic art and patriotic scholarship. Both these, like everything great and good, belong to the whole world and can be developed only by a general free interaction on the part of all our contemporaries and with constant reference to the past and to what is known about it.

691. Scholarly knowledge tends, on the whole, to be remote from life and only returns to it via a detour.

692. For the sciences are really compendia of life: they connect and establish outer and inner experiences in an interrelated context.

693. Basically the sciences are only of interest in a specialized world, that of scholarship; for involving the rest of the world and informing it in this field, as has happened in more recent times, is an abuse and does more harm than good.

694. The sciences should only affect the world by means of higher practical application; for they are really all of them esoteric and can only become exoteric if they correct some form of activity. All other participation leads nowhere.

695. The sciences, considered within their own inner circle, are in fact treated with immediate interest, every time. A powerful stimulus, particularly by something new and unheard of, or at least by something greatly advanced, arouses general attention which can go on for years and which has proved to be particularly fruitful in the recent past.

696. A significant fact, an ingenious aperçu, occupies a very great number of people, first as they get to know about it, then as they come to

understand it, work on it and extend its scope.

697. About any new important matter the crowd always asks what use

93

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

it is, nor is this unwarranted; for it is only by its usefulness that the crowd can come to understand the value of anything.

698. True sages ask what a matter is in itself and in relation to other matters, and they are unconcerned about its usefulness, that is, the way it can be applied to what is familiar and necessary for life; for all that kind of thing will, in due course, be discovered by minds of quite different cast, by sharp-witted people who revel in life, have technical expertise and are versatile.

699. Spurious sages only try to draw some personal profit, and that as quickly as possible, from any new discovery; they are out for empty renown as they attempt, now to develop, now to increase, now to improve, to stake a rapid claim or perhaps even take advance possession of a discovery. By such immature procedures they make true science. unsafe and confuse it, and indeed they stunt its most excellent result, namely its practical flowering.

700. The most damaging prejudice is the idea that any kind of research into nature might be laid under an interdict.

701. Every research worker must see himself exactly as though he were someone called to serve on a jury. All he has to do is to make sure that his exposition is complete and is explained by clear evidence. On this basis he summarizes his conviction and casts his vote, whether or not his opinion coincides with that of the man who will report on it.

702. He then remains equally calm when the majority is on his side as when he finds himself in a minority; for he has done his part: he has expressed his conviction, he is not lord over minds and attitudes.

703. Scholars of this kind, however, have never wanted to count as important in the world of scholarship: in general, people are out to rule and dominate, and because very few are really independent, the crowd draws the individual along in its wake. |

94

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

704. The history of philosophy, of the sciences, of religion, all show that opinions are spread abroad on a quantitative scale and that the leading position always goes to what is easier to grasp, that is, to whatever is easier and more comfortable for the human spirit. Indeed, the man who has fully educated and developed himself in a higher sense can always reckon to have the majority against him.

705. If nature in its lifeless beginning were not so thoroughly stereo- metric, how would it, in the end, attain unaccountable and immeasur-

able life?

706. Man in himself, in so far as he is using his sound senses, is the greatest and most exact ‘physical’, i.e. scientific apparatus that can be imagined, and this, precisely, is the most disastrous aspect of modern physics: that experiments have been, as it were, segregated from the human factor and that nature is to be recognized only by the evidence of artificial instruments and in this way limits what nature wants to achieve and prove.

707. Similarly in the matter of calculation. Much that cannot be calcu- lated is true just as in the case of a great deal that cannot be taken as far as a decisive experiment.

708. But that is precisely why man stands so high — that what is otherwise not representable can be represented in him. For what is a string in a musical instrument and all its mechanical grades compared with the musician’s ear! Indeed, one can say: what are the elemental phenomena of nature itself compared with man, who has first of all to tame and modify them so as to assimilate them in some small degree to his own purposes!

709. Too much is demanded of an experiment if it is to achieve every- thing within its own compass. Thus, to begin with, electricity could only be demonstrated by the action of rubbing, whereas now its most impressive aspect is produced merely by contact.

95

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

710. Just as one will never be able to dispute the leading position and effectiveness of the French language as a highly developed court- and world-language with the potential of continuous further development, so too it will never occur to anyone to underestimate the debt which the world owed to mathematicians who deal with the most important matters in their own language; for they have the capacity to regulate, determine and decide everything that is subject in the highest sense to number and to measurement.

711. Every thinking man who looks at his calendar, his watch, will remember to whom he owes these benefits. But even if we acknowledge and concede such benefits in time and space with due reverence, we will realize that we are all, in fact, in touch with what goes far beyond these spheres, with something that belongs to us all and without which nothing could either be done or achieved: idea and love.

712. ‘Who knows anything about electricity,’ said a joking scientist, ‘except when he strokes a cat in the dark or when lightning and thunder flash and roar down around him? How much and how little does he know about it then?’

713. We can use Lichtenberg’s writings like a marvellous magic wand: wherever he cracks a joke, a problem lies hidden.

714. He also had a cheerful idea about the void and vacant area of the universe between Mars and Jupiter. When Kant had carefully proved that these two planets had consumed and appropriated all the available matter to be found in this void area, Lichtenberg said in his flippant way: ‘Why shouldn’t there be such things as invisible worlds?’ And wasn’t he perfectly right? Are not the newly discovered planets invisible to the whole world, except for the few astronomers to whose word and calculation we have to give credence?

715. Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.

96

FROM WILHELM MEISTER ’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

716. People are so harassed by the infinitely conditional nature of phenomena that they fail to perceive the one basic phenomenon.

717. ‘When travellers revel very joyfully in mountain climbing, I feel that this is something barbaric, even godless. Mountains do of course give us an idea of the power of nature, not, however, of a kindly providence. Of what practical use are they to human beings? If a man decides to live way up in the mountains, his house will be buried or shifted by an avalanche in the winter and by a landslide in the summer; the mountain torrent drowns and carries off his flocks, storms sweep away his storage barns full of wheat. When he sets out on his way, every ascent is the torture of Sisyphus, every descent the fall of Vulcan; day by day his path is littered with stones and disappears, the mountain torrent is impossible to navigate. Even if his stunted animals find precarious nourishment, or he provides them with a miserable supply of fodder, the elements, or else wild beasts, carry off his herds. He leads a solitary wretched life like the moss growing on a tombstone, devoid of comfort and company. And these zigzag crests, these hateful rock-faces, these deformed pyramids which cover the most beautiful stretches of the world with all the horror of the North Pole —how cana kind-hearted man possibly take pleasure in them and any friend of man sing their praises?”

718. Asan answer to this worthy man’s paradoxical utterances one might reply that if God and nature had willed to develop and continue the primal mountain complex from Nubia right through to the west and as far as the great ocean, and, furthermore, to sever this mountain range a few times in a north-south direction, this would have created valleys where many a Father Abraham and many an Albert Julius, a ‘Felsenburg’, would have found a land of Canaan where his descendants, easily rivalling the stars in number, could have increased and multiplied.

719. Stones are silent teachers, they make those who study them dumb, and the best to be learnt from them is incommunicable.

97

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

720. What I really know, I know only for myself; an uttered word is seldom of constructive value: it mostly leads to contradiction, hesitation and to a standstill.

721. Seen as a science, crystallography is an altogether unusual case. It is not productive, it is just itself, not giving rise to anything else, more especially now that a number of isomorphic bodies have been found which turn out to be quite distinct according to their content. As it really is not possible to apply crystallography in any way, it has developed largely as something self-contained. It gives the mind a certain limited satisfaction and is so manifold in its detail that it can be called inexhaust- ible; which is the reason why it keeps a lasting and decisive hold on outstanding people.

722. Crystallography has something of the monk and the confirmed bachelor about it, and it is therefore sufficient unto itself. It has no practical influence in a living context; for its most precious products, crystalline gems, first have to be cut and polished before we can use them to adorn our womenfolk.

723. The opposite can be said of chemistry, which can be applied in the most extensive way and proves to be of the most unlimited influence on life.

724. The concept of coming into being is completely denied to us, which is why, when we watch something coming into being, we imagine that it has always been there. That is why we can grasp the system of encapsulation, of things being contained one within another.

725. How much that is significant we see as constituted of various parts: look at architectural works; one sees a great deal piled up in regular and irregular ways. That is why the atomistic concept is close by and readily at hand for us; and why we are not afraid of applying it also in organic cases. |

726. Anyone unable to grasp the difference between a fantasy and an

98

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

idea, between the realm of law and that of hypothesis, is in a bad way as a scientist.

727. There are hypotheses where intelligence and imagination replace the idea.

728. It doesn’t do to dally too long in the realm of the abstract — what is esoteric is damaging when it strives to be exoteric. Life is best taught by what is alive.

729. The kind of woman who can replace her children’s father, should he not be there, is considered the most excellent.

730. The invaluable advantage accruing to foreigners who only now come to a thorough study of our literature is that they are immediately raised high above the early illnesses of its development which we ourselves have had to suffer in the course of the century; and if luck holds, they can in this way enjoy most desirable instruction.

731. Where the eighteenth-century French are destructive, Wieland teases.

732. Poetical talent is given to the peasant just as to the knight; what matters is that each should make the best of his condition and treat it

with dignity.

733. ‘What are tragedies but versified passions of people who make goodness knows what of external circumstances?’

734. In future it will not be possible to use the word ‘school’ in the context of the German theatre as one would use it in the history of art and in speaking, for instance, of a Florentine, Roman and Venetian school. It is a term which one might still have used some thirty or forty years ago when training of a natural artistic kind in more limited circumstances could still be envisaged; for, to speak more precisely, the word ‘school’ in connection with the arts is really only right for the

99

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

initial stages, for as soon as it has produced outstanding artists its influence is immediately extended abroad. Florence shows its influence on France and Spain; the Netherlands and Germany learn from Italy and gain more liberty of mind and spirit, while, in exchange, southerners learn a happier technique and the most precise execution from the north.

735. The German theatre has now reached the stage of finality, general education being so widespread that it cannot continue to belong to a single locality or proceed from one particular point.

736. The basis of all theatrical art, as of any other form of art, is truth and what accords with nature. The more weighty such art is, the higher the level at which the poet and the actors manage to grasp it, the higher will be the standing of the stage. Germany enjoys great advantage in this respect because reciting good poetry has become a more general practice and has also spread beyond the theatre.

737. The basis of all recitation is declamation and mime. As the actual recitation is the only thing that matters and has to be practised in reading aloud, it is obvious that this kind of reading remains the school of truth and naturalness if men undertaking such work are convinced of the value, the dignity of their profession.

738. Shakespeare and Calderón have provided a splendid entry into this kind of reading aloud; however, one ought to consider whether the impressive strangeness, this talent soaring to a point of unreality, may not be precisely what could prove damaging to German training in this respect.

739. Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art. But every nation has a particular quality distinct from the individuality of mankind in general; this may repel us to begin with, but if we were to put up with it, to yield ourselves up to its influence, it could, in the end, overpower and stifle our own individual nature.

I00

FROM WILHELM MEISTER "5 JOURNEYMAN YEARS

740. How much that is false have Shakespeare, and, more particularly, Calderón, brought upon us, how these two great lights in the poetical heavens have turned into misleading lights, into a will-o’-the-wisp — let this be decided by future literary historians.

741. Nowhere can I condone that we should put ourselves completely on a par with the Spanish theatre. Calderón, this splendid dramatist, has so much that is conventional that an impartial observer is hard put to recognize his poetical talents hidden beneath all the etiquette of theatre. And if one confronts any audience with this kind of thing, one always takes its good will for granted, assuming that it will agree to accept something completely alien to its own world if it is to take pleasure in a foreign meaning, tone and rhythm, abandoning for a time what is really its own true bent.

742. Yorick-Sterne’s spirit was the most attractive ever; reading him invariably makes one feel free and good; his type of humour is inimitable, and not every kind of humour can set the soul free.

743. ‘Moderation and a clear sky are Apollo and the Muses.’

744. ‘Sight is the noblest sense. The other four only inform us via our organs of tactile apprehension: we hear, feel, smell, touch by contact; sight, however, is of infinitely higher standing, rises more subtly above what is material and gets close to spiritual faculties.’

745. ‘If we put ourselves in the place of other people, the jealousy and hatred we so often feel about them would disappear, and if we put others in our place, pride and conceit would greatly diminish.’

746. ‘Someone compared reflection and action with Rachel and Leah: one was more attractive, the other more fruitful.’

747. ‘Nothing in the world except health and virtue is more to be treasured than knowledge and learning; nor is anything so easily attain-

able and so cheap to acquire: all you have to do is to be still, all you

IOI

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

have to spend is time, something we cannot save in any other way than by spending it.’

748. ‘If one could store time as one can store ready money without using it, half the world would take this as an excuse for laziness, though only up to a point; for this would be like a household where one lives on capital without bothering about the interest.’

749. ‘Modern poets put a lot of water into their ink.’

750. Among the many curious stupidities of the schools, none seems to me so ridiculous as the strife about the authenticity of old writings, old works. For I ask you, is it the author or the works we are admiring or censuring? Our sole concern is always and only the author before us; why should we bother about the names when we are interpreting a work of the spirit?’

751. ‘Who can maintain that it is Virgil or Homer we have before us when we are reading the works ascribed to them? But our business is with the writers, and what more do we want? And, indeed, it seems to me that the scholars who are so pernickety about this unimportant matter are no wiser than a very pretty woman who once asked me, with the sweetest possible smile, who was, in fact, the author of Shakespeare’s plays.’

752. ‘It is better to do the most unimportant thing in the world than to look on half an hour as unimportant.’

753. ‘Courage and modesty are the least ambiguous virtues; for they are of a kind that hypocrisy cannot mime. They also have in common the

fact that they find expression in a similar colouring.’

754. ‘In the thieving fraternity fools are the worst: they filch both your time and your temper.’

102

FROM WILHELM MEISTER’S JOURNEYMAN YEARS

755. ‘Respecting ourselves determines our morals; valuing others rules our behaviour.’

756. “Art and learning are words so often used and whose precise difference is so rarely understood, the one is often used for the other.’

757. Nor do I like the definitions given of them. Somewhere I once found a comparison between learning and wit, art and humour. This seems to me to be imagination rather than philosophy: maybe it gives us some idea of the difference between the two but not of the particular qualities of each.’

758. ‘I think one could describe learning as knowledge of things in general, extracted knowledge; art, on the other hand, would be learning used for action. Learning would be reason, and art its mechanism; in the end, learning would be the theorem, art the problem.’

759. ‘Perhaps one might make the following objection: poetry is deemed an art and yet it is not mechanical. But I deny that it is an art; nor yet is it learning. The arts and systems of learning are acquired by thinking, not so poetry; for this is inspiration: it was conceived in the soul when it first stirred into life. We ought to call it neither an art, nor learning, but genius.’

760. And now, too, at this present moment, every educated man should have another look at Sterne’s works so that the nineteenth century, too, should discover what we owe him and realize what we might go on owing him in future.

761. Literary success tends to obscure what was influential at an earlier time, covering up what has resulted from this earlier work; that is why it is advisable to look back from time to time. Whatever is original about us is best preserved and commended when