“Sometimes,” said Goethe, “people do not like to look on me as I am, but turn their glances from everything which could show me in my true light.  Schiller, on the contrary—­who, between ourselves, was much more of an aristocrat than I am, but who considered what he said more than I—­had the wonderful fortune to be looked upon as a particular friend of the people.  I give it up to him with all my heart, and console myself with the thought that others before me had fared no better.

“It is true that I could be no friend to the French Revolution; for its horrors were too near me, and shocked me daily and hourly, whilst its beneficial results were not then to be discovered.  Neither could I be indifferent to the fact that the Germans were endeavoring, artificially, to bring about such scenes here, as were, in France, the consequence of a great necessity.

“But I was as little a friend to arbitrary rule.  Indeed, I was perfectly convinced that a great revolution is never a fault of the people, but of the government.  Revolutions are utterly impossible as long as governments are constantly just and constantly vigilant, so that they may anticipate them by improvements at the right time, and not hold out until they are forced to yield by the pressure from beneath.

“Because I hated the Revolution, the name of the ’Friend of the powers that be’ was bestowed upon me.  That is, however, a very ambiguous title, which I would beg to decline.  If the ‘powers that be’ were all that is excellent, good, and just, I should have no objection to the title; but, since with much that is good there is also much that is bad, unjust, and imperfect, a friend of the ‘powers that be’ means often little less than the friend of the obsolete and bad.[12]

“But time is constantly progressing, and human affairs wear every fifty years a different aspect; so that an arrangement which, in the year 1800, was perfection, may, perhaps, in the year 1850, be a defect.

“And, furthermore, nothing is good for a nation but that which arises from its own core and its own general wants, without apish imitation of another; since what to one race of people, of a certain age, is a wholesome nutriment, may perhaps prove a poison for another.  All endeavors to introduce any foreign innovation, the necessity for which is not rooted in the core of the nation itself, are therefore foolish; and all premeditated revolutions of the kind are I unsuccessful, for they are without God, who keeps aloof from such bungling.  If, however, there exists an actual necessity for a great reform amongst a people, God is with it, and it prospers.  He was visibly with Christ and his first adherents; for the appearance of the new doctrine of love was a necessity to the people.  He was also visibly with Luther; for the purification of the doctrine corrupted by the priests was no less a necessity.  Neither of the great powers whom I have named was, however, a friend of the permanent; much more were both of them convinced that the old leaven must be got rid of, and that it would be impossible to go on and remain in the untrue, unjust, and defective way.”