between optimism and pessimism. These are the Scylla and Charybdis of
the critic's career. Almost every man who thinks or speaks about public
affairs is either an optimist or a pessimist; which he is, depends a
good deal on temperament, but often on character. The political jobber
or corruptionist is almost always an optimist. So is the prosperous
business man. So is nearly every politician, because the optimist is
nearly always the more popular of the two. As a general rule, people
like cheerful men and the promise of good times. The kill-joy and bearer
of bad news has always been an odious character. But for the cultivated
man there is no virtue in either optimism or pessimism. Some people
think it a duty to be optimistic, and for some people it may be a duty;
but one of the great uses of education is to teach us to be neither one
nor the other. In the management of our personal affairs, we try to be
neither one nor the other. In business, a persistent and uproarious
optimist would certainly have poor credit. And why? Because in business
the trustworthy man, as everybody knows, is the man who sees things as
they are: and to see things as they are, without glamor or illusion, is
the first condition of worldly success. It is absolutely essential in
war, in finance, in law, in every field of human activity in which the
future has to be thought of and provided for. It is just as essential in
politics. The only reason why it is not thought as essential in politics
is, the punishment for failure or neglect comes in politics more
slowly.
The pessimist has generally a bad name, but there is a good deal to be
said for him. To take a recent illustration, the man who took
pessimistic views of the silver movement was for nearly twenty years
under a cloud. This gloomy anticipation of 1873 was not realized until
1893. For a thousand years after Marcus Aurelius, the pessimist, if I
may use the expression, was "cock of the walk." He certainly has no
reason to be ashamed of his role in the Eastern world for a thousand
years after the Mohammedan Hegira. In Italy and Spain he has not needed
to hang his head since the Renaissance. In fact, if we take various
nations and long reaches of time, we shall find that the gloomy man has
been nearly as often justified by the course of events as the cheerful
one. Neither of them has any special claim to a hearing on public
affairs. A persistent optimist, although he may be a most agreeable man
in family life, is likely, in business or politics, to be just as
foolish and unbearable as a persistent pessimist. He is as much out of
harmony with the order of nature. The universe is not governed on
optimistic any more than on pessimistic principles. The best and wisest
of men make their mistakes and have their share of sorrow and sickness
and losses. So also the most happily situated nations must suffer from
internal discord, the blunders of statesmen, and the madness of the
people. What Cato said in the Senate of the conditions of success,
"vigilando, agendo, bene consulendo, prospere omnia cedunt," is as true
to-day as it was two thousand years ago. We must remember that though
the optimist may be the pleasantest man to have about us, he is the
least likely to take precautions; that is, the least likely to watch and
work for success. We owe a great deal of our slovenly legislation to his
presence in large numbers in Congress and the legislatures. The great
suffering through which we are now passing, in consequence of the
persistence in our silver purchases, is the direct result of unreasoning
optimism. Its promoters disregarded the warnings of economists and
financiers because they believed that somehow, they did not know how,
the thing would come out right in the end. The silver collapse, together
with the Civil War over slavery, are striking illustrations to occur in
one century, of the fact that if things come out right in the end, it is
often after periods of great suffering and disaster. Could people have
foreseen how the slavery controversy would end, what frantic efforts
would have been made for peaceful abolition! Could people have foreseen
the panic of last year, with its wide-spread disaster, what haste would
have been made to stop the silver purchases! And yet the experience of
mankind afforded abundant reason for anticipating both results.
This leads me to say that the reason why educated men should try and
keep a fair mental balance between both pessimism and optimism, is that
there has come over the world in the last twenty-five or thirty years a
very great change of opinion touching the relations of the government to
the community. When Europe settled down to peaceful work after the great
wars of the French Revolution, it was possessed with the idea that the
freedom of the individual was all that was needed for public prosperity
and private happiness. The old government interference with people's
movements and doings was supposed to be the reason why nations had not
been happy in the past. This became the creed, in this country, of the
Democratic party, which came into existence after the foundation of the
federal government. At the same time there grew up here the popular idea
of the American character, in which individualism was the most marked
trait. If you are not familiar with it in your own time, you may
remember it in the literature of the earlier half of the century. The
typical American was always the architect of his own fortunes. He sailed
the seas and penetrated the forest, and built cities and lynched the
horse thieves, and fought the Indians and dug the mines, without
anybody's help or support. He had even an ill-concealed contempt for
regular troops, as men under control and discipline. He scorned
government for any other purposes than security and the administration
of justice. This was the kind of American that Tocqueville found here in
1833. He says:--
"The European often sees in the public functionaries simply
force; the American sees nothing but law. One may then say
that in America a man never obeys a man, or anything but
justice and law. Consequently he has formed of himself an
opinion which is often exaggerated, but is always salutary.
He trusts without fear to his own strength, which appears to
him equal to anything. A private individual conceives some
sort of enterprise. Even if this enterprise have some sort of
connection with the public welfare, it never occurs to him to
address himself to the government in order to obtain its aid.
He makes his plan known, offers to carry it out, calls other
individuals to his aid, and struggles with all his might
against any obstacles there may be in his way. Often,
without doubt, he succeeds less well than the State would in
his place; but in the long run the general result of
individual enterprises far surpasses anything the government
could do."
Now there is no doubt that if this type of character has not passed
away, it has been greatly modified; and it has been modified by two
agencies--the "labor problem," as it is called, and legislative
protection to native industry. I am not going to make an argument about
the value of this protection in promoting native industry, or about its
value from the industrial point of view. We may or we may not owe to it
the individual progress and prosperity of the United States. About that
I do not propose to say anything. What I want to say is that the
doctrine that it is a function of government, not simply to foster
industry in general, but to consider the case of every particular
industry and give it the protection that it needs, could not be preached
and practiced for thirty years in a community like this, without
modifying the old American conception of the relation of the government
to the individual. It makes the government, in a certain sense, a
partner in every industrial enterprise, and makes every Presidential
election an affair of the pocket to every miner and manufacturer and to
his men; for the men have for fully thirty years been told that the
amount of their wages would depend, to a certain extent at least, on the
way the election went. The notion that the government owes assistance to
individuals in carrying on business and making a livelihood has in fact,
largely through the tariff discussions, permeated a very large class of
the community, and has materially changed what I may call the American
outlook. It has greatly reinforced among the foreign-born population the
socialistic ideas which many bring here with them, of the powers and
duties of the State toward labor; for it is preached vehemently by the
employing class.
What makes this look the more serious is, that our political and social
manners are not adapted to it. In Europe, the State is possessed of an
administrative machine which has a finish, efficacy, and permanence
unknown here. Tocqueville comments on its absence among us; and it is,
as all the advocates of civil-service reform know, very difficult to
supply. All the agencies of the government suffer from the imposition on
them of what I may call non-American duties. For instance, a
custom-house organized as a political machine was never intended to
collect the enormous sum of duties which must pass through its hands
under our tariff. A post-office whose master has to be changed every
four years to "placate" Tammany, or the anti-Snappers, or any other body
of politicians, was never intended to handle the huge mass which
American mails have now become. One of the greatest objections to the
income tax is the prying into people's affairs which it involves. No man
likes to tell what his income is to every stranger, much less to a
politician, which our collectors are sure to be. Secrecy on the part of
the collector is in fact essential to reconcile people to it in England
or Germany, where it is firmly established; but our collectors sell
their lists to the newspapers in order to make the contributors pay up.
In all these things, we are trying to meet the burdens and
responsibilities of much older societies with the machinery of a much
earlier and simpler state of things. It is high time to halt in this
progress until our administrative system has been brought up to the
level even of our present requirements. It is quite true that, with our
system of State and federal constitutions laying prohibitions on the
Legislature and Congress, any great extension of the sphere of
government in our time seems very unlikely. Yet the assumption by
Congress, with the support of the Supreme Court, of the power to issue
paper money in time of peace, the power to make prolonged purchases of a
commodity like silver, the power to impose an income tax, to execute
great public works, and to protect native industry, are powers large
enough to effect a great change in the constitution of society and in
the distribution of wealth, such as, it is safe to say, in the present
state of human culture, no government ought to have and exercise.
One hears every day from educated people some addition to the number of
things which "governments" ought to do, but for which any government we
have at present is totally unfit. One listens to them with amazement,
when looking at the material of which our government is composed,--for
the matter of that, of which all governments are composed; for I suppose
there is no question that all legislative bodies in the world have in
twenty years run down in quality. The parliamentary system is apparently
failing to meet the demands of modern democratic society, and is falling
into some disrepute; but it would seem as if there was at present just
as little chance of a substitute of any kind as of the dethronement of
universal suffrage. It will probably last indefinitely, and be as good
or as bad as its constituents make it. But this probable extension of
the powers and functions of government makes more necessary than ever a
free expression of opinion, and especially of educated opinion. We may
rail at "mere talk" as much as we please, but the probability is that
the affairs of nations and of men will be more and more regulated by
talk. The amount of talk which is now expended on all subjects of human
interest--and in "talk" I include contributions to periodical
literature--is something of which no previous age has had the smallest
conception. Of course it varies infinitely in quality. A very large
proportion of it does no good beyond relieving the feelings of the
talker. Political philosophers maintain, and with good reason, that one
of its greatest uses is keeping down discontent under popular
government. It is undoubtedly true that it is an immense relief to a man
with a grievance to express his feelings about it in words, even if he
knows that his words will have no immediate effect. Self-love is apt to
prevent most men from thinking that anything they say with passion or
earnestness will utterly and finally fail. But still it is safe to
suppose that one half of the talk of the world on subjects of general
interest is waste. But the other half certainly tells. We know this from
the change in ideas from generation to generation. We see that opinions
which at one time everybody held became absurd in the course of half a
century--opinions about religion and morals and manners and government.
Nearly every man of my age can recall old opinions of his own on
subjects of general interest, which he once thought highly respectable,
and which he is now almost ashamed of having ever held. He does not
remember when he changed them, or why, but somehow they have passed away
from him.
In communities these changes are often very striking. The
transformation, for instance, of the England of Cromwell into the
England of Queen Anne, or of the New England of Cotton Mather into the
New England of Theodore Parker and Emerson, was very extraordinary, but
it would be very difficult to say in detail what brought it about or
when it began. Lecky has some curious observations in his "History of
Rationalism" on these silent changes in new beliefs, apropos of the
disappearance of the belief in witchcraft. Nobody could say what had
swept it away; but it appeared that in a certain year people were ready
to burn old women as witches, and a few years later were ready to laugh
at or pity any one who thought old women could be witches. "At one
period," says he, "we find every one disposed to believe in witches; at
a later period we find this predisposition has silently passed away."
The belief in witchcraft may perhaps be considered a somewhat violent
illustration, like the change in public opinion about slavery in this
country. But there can be no doubt that it is talk--somebody's,
anybody's, everybody's talk--by which these changes are wrought, by
which each generation comes to feel and think differently from its
predecessor.
No one ever talks freely about anything without contributing something,
let it be ever so little, to the unseen forces which carry the race on
to its final destiny. Even if he does not make a positive impression, he
counteracts or modifies some other impression, or sets in motion some
train of ideas in some one else, which helps to change the face of the
world. So I shall, in disregard of the great laudation of silence which
filled the earth in the days of Carlyle, say that one of the functions
of an educated man is to talk; and of course he should try to talk
wisely.
[Illustration: GOETHE.]
GOETHE
(1749-1832)
BY EDWARD DOWDEN
Johann Wolfgang Goethe was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main on August 28th,
1749, and died at Weimar on March 22d, 1832. His great life, extending
over upwards of fourscore years, makes him a man of the eighteenth
century and also of the nineteenth. He belongs not only to German but to
European literature. And in the history of European literature his
position is that of successor to Voltaire and Rousseau. Humanity, as
Voltaire said, had lost its title-deeds, and the task of the eighteenth
century was to recover them. Under all Voltaire's zeal for destruction
in matters of religious belief lay a positive faith and a creative
sentiment,--a faith in human intellect and the sentiment of social
justice. What indefatigable toil! what indefatigable play! Surely it was
not all to establish a negation. Voltaire poured a gay yet bitter _elan_
into the intellectual movement of his time. Yet amid his various efforts
for humanity he wanted love; he wanted reverence. And although a
positive tendency underlies his achievements, we are warranted in
repeating the common sentence, that upon the whole he destroyed more
than he built up.
Voltaire fought to enfranchise the understanding. Rousseau dreamed,
brooded, suffered, to emancipate the heart. A wave of passion, or at
least of sentiment, swept over Europe with the 'Nouvelle Heloise,' the
'Emile,' the 'Confessions.' It was Rousseau, exclaims Byron, who "threw
enchantment over passion," who "knew how to make madness beautiful."
Such an emancipation of the heart was felt, in the eighteenth century,
to be a blessed deliverance from the material interests and the eager
yet too arid speculation of the age. But Byron in that same passage of
'Childe Harold' names Rousseau "the self-torturing sophist." And a
sophist Rousseau was. His intellect fed upon fictions, and dangerous
fictions,--fictions respecting nature, respecting the individual man,
respecting human society. Therefore his intellect failed to illuminate,
clarify, tranquilize his heart. His emotions were turbid, restless, and
lacking in sanity.
Here then were Goethe's two great predecessors: one a most vivacious
intelligence, the other a brooding sensibility; one aiming at an
emancipation of the understanding, but deficient in reverence and in
love; the other aiming at an emancipation of the affections, but
deficient in sanity of thought. In what relation stood Goethe to these
great forces of the eighteenth century?
In his old age Goethe, speaking of Voltaire, uses the words "a universal
source of light." But as a young man he was repelled by "the factious
dishonesty of Voltaire, and his perversion of so many worthy subjects."
"He would never have done," says Goethe, "with degrading religion and
the sacred books, for the sake of injuring priestcraft, as they called
it." Goethe, indeed, did not deny a use to the spirit of negation.
Mephistopheles lives and works. Yet he lives and works as the unwilling
servant of the Lord, and the service he renders is to provoke men from
indolence to activity.
Into the influence of Rousseau, on the contrary, and into the general
movement of feeling to which Rousseau belonged, Goethe in his youth was
caught, almost inevitably; and he abandoned himself to it for a time, it
might seem without restraint.
Yet Goethe differed from Rousseau as profoundly as he differed from
Voltaire. Rousseau's undisciplined sensibility, morbidly excited by the
harshness or imagined harshness of his fellows, by bodily torment, by
broodings in solitude, became at last one quivering mass of disease. "No
tragedy had ever a fifth act so squalid." What a contrast to the closing
scenes of Goethe's life in that house of his, like a modest temple of
the Muses, listening to Plutarch read aloud by his daughter-in-law, or
serenely active, "ohne Hast aber ohne Rast" (without haste, but without
rest), in widening his sympathies with men or enlarging his knowledge of
nature.
How was this? Why did the ways part so widely for Rousseau and for
Goethe?
The young creator of 'Werther' may seem to have started on his career as
a German Rousseau. In reality, 'Werther' expressed only a fragment of
Goethe's total self. A reserve force of will and an intellect growing
daily in clearness and in energy would not permit him to end as Rousseau
ended. In 'Goetz von Berlichingen' there goes up a cry for freedom; it
presents the more masculine side of that spirit of revolt from the bonds
of the eighteenth century, that "return to nature," which is presented
in its more feminine aspects by 'Werther.' But by degrees it became
evident to Goethe that the only true ideal of freedom is a liberation
not of the passions, not of the intellect, but of the whole man; that
this involves a conciliation of all the powers and faculties within us;
and that such a conciliation can be effected only by degrees, and by
steadfast toil.
And so we find him willing during ten years at Weimar to undertake work
which might appear to be fatal to the development of his genius. To
reform army administration, make good roads, work the mines with
energetic intelligence, restore the finances to order,--was this fit
employment for one born to be a poet? Except a few lyrics and the prose
'Iphigenie,' these years produced no literary work of importance; yet
Goethe himself speaks of them as his "zweite Schriftstellerepoche."--his
second epoch as a writer. They were needful to make him a master in the
art of life, needful to put him into possession of all his powers.
Men of genius are quick growers; but men of the highest genius, which
includes the wisdom of human life, are not speedily ripe. Goethe
had entered literature early; he had stormed the avenues. Now at
six-and-twenty he was a chief figure in German, even in European,
literature; and from twenty-six to thirty-seven he published, we may
say nothing. But though he ceased to astonish the world, he was well
employed in widening the basis of his existence; in organizing his
faculties; in conciliating passions, intellect, and will; in applying
his mind to the real world; in endeavoring to comprehend it aright; in
testing and training his powers by practical activity.
A time came when he felt that his will and skill were mature; that he
was no longer an apprentice in the art of living, but a master
craftsman. Tasks that had grown irksome and were felt to be a
distraction from higher duties, he now abandoned. Goethe fled for a time
to Italy, there to receive his degree in the high school of life, and to
start upon a course of more advanced studies. Thenceforward until his
closing days the record is one of almost uninterrupted labor in his
proper fields of literature, art, and science. "In Rome," he wrote, "I
have for the first time found myself, for the first time come into
harmony with myself, and grown happy and rational." He had found
himself, because his passions and his intellect now co-operated; his
pursuit of truth had all the ardor of a first love; his pursuit of
beauty was not a fantastic chase, but was subject to rational law; and
his effort after truth and his effort after beauty were alike supported
by an adult will.