It is no part of the analogy that the pressure of sex is always and by its very nature like the attraction of atoms.  Aside from the fact that character consists largely in the steady inhibition of instinct and passion by the will, there is this momentous difference between atoms or molecules, on the one hand, and souls on the other:  the character of the atom or molecule is constant, that of the soul is highly variable.  There is no room here for remarks on free will and determinism; suffice it to say that Goethe does not preach any doctrine of mechanical determinism in human relations.  The scientific analogy must not be pressed too hard.  It is really not important, since after all nothing turns on it.  Whatever interest the novel has it would have if all reference to chemistry had been omitted.  Goethe’s thesis, if he can be said to have one, is simply that character is fate.

He imagines a middle-aged man and woman, Edward and Charlotte, who are, to all seeming, happily united in marriage.  Each has been married before to an unloved mate who has conveniently died, leaving them both free to yield to the gentle pull of long-past youthful attachment.  Their feeling for each other is only a mild friendship, but that does not appear to augur ill, since they are well-to-do, and their fine estate offers them both a plenty of interesting work.  Edward has a highly esteemed friend called the Captain, who is for the moment without suitable employment for his ability and energy.  Edward can give him just the needed work, with great advantage to the property, and would like to do so.  Charlotte fears that the presence of the Captain may disturb their pleasant idyl, but finally yields.  She herself has a niece, Ottilie, a beautiful girl whom no one understands and who is not doing well at her boarding-school.  Charlotte would like to have the girl under her own care.  After much debate the pair take both the Captain and Ottilie into their spacious castle.

And now the elective affinity begins to do its disastrous work.  Edward, who has always indulged himself in every whim and has no other standard of conduct, falls madly in love with the charming Ottilie, who has a passion for making herself useful and serving everybody.  She adapts herself to Edward, fails to see what a shabby specimen of a man he really is, humors his whims, and worships him—­at first in an innocent girlish way.  Charlotte is not long in discovering that the Captain is a much better man than her husband; she loves him, but within the limits of wifely duty.  In the vulgar world of prose such a tangle could be most easily straightened out by divorce and remarriage.  This is what Edward proposes and tries to bring about.  The others are almost won over to this solution when the event happens that precipitates the tragedy:  the child of Edward and Charlotte is accidentally drowned by Ottilie’s carelessness.