The “becoming” seems rather negative than positive; it is the lessening of evil, but is not itself the good; it is a noble discontent, but is by no means felicity.  This ceaseless pursuit of an endless end is a generous madness, but is not reason; it is the yearning for what can never be, a touching malady, but it is not wisdom.  Yet there is none who may not achieve harmony; and when he has it, he is within the eternal order, and represents the divine thought at least as clearly as a flower does, or a solar system.  Harmony seeks nothing that is outside herself.  She is exactly that which she should be; she expresses goodness, order, law, truth, honour; she transcends time and reveals the eternal.

Memories of the Golden Age

In the world of society one must seem to live on ambrosia and to know none but noble thoughts.  Anxiety, want, passion, simply do not exist.  All realism is suppressed as brutal.  It is a world which amuses itself with the flattering illusion that it lives above the clouds and breathes mythological air.  That is why all vehemence, the cry of Nature, all suffering, thoughtless familiarity, and every frank sign of love shock this delicate medium like a bombshell; they shatter this collective fabric, this palace of clouds, this enchanted architecture, just as shrill cockcrow scatters the fairies into hiding.  These fine receptions are unconsciously a work of art, a kind of poetry, by which cultivated society reconstructs an idyll that is age-long dead.  They are confused memories of the golden age, or aspirations after a harmony which mundane reality has not in it to give.

Goethe Under the Lash

I cannot like Goethe:  he has little soul.  His understanding of love, religion, duty, patriotism, is paltry and even shocking.  He lacks an ardent generosity.  A central dryness, an ill-cloaked egoism show through his supple and rich talent.  True, this selfishness of his at least respects everyone’s liberty and applauds all originality; but it helps no one, troubles itself for no one, bears no one’s burden; in a word, it lacks charity, the great Christian virtue.  To his mind perfection lies in personal nobility, and not in love.  His keynote is aesthetic and not moral.  He ignores sanctity, and has never so much as reflected on the terrible problem of evil.  He believes in the opportunity of the individual, but neither in liberty nor in responsibility.  He is a stranger to the social and political aspirations of the multitude; he has no more thought for the disinherited, the feeble, the oppressed, than Nature has.

The profound disquiet of our era never touches Goethe; discords do not affect the deaf.  Whoso has never heard the voice of conscience, regret and remorse, cannot even guess at the anxiety of those who have two masters, two laws, and belong to two worlds, the world of Nature and the world of Liberty.  His choice is already made; his only world is Nature.  But it is far otherwise with humanity.  For men hear indeed the prophets of Nature, but they hear also the voice of Religion; the joy of life attracts them, but devotion moves them also; they no longer know whether they hate or adore the crucifix.