Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/228

206 freedom? Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaften is a high instance of modern art dealing thus with modern life; it regards that life as the modern mind must regard it, but reflects upon it blitheness and repose. Natural laws we shall never modify, embarrass us as they may; but there is still something in the nobler or less noble attitude with which we watch their fatal combinations. In Wahlverwandtschaften this entanglement, this network of law, becomes a tragic situation, in which a group of noble men and women work out a supreme dénouement. Who, if he foresaw all, would fret against circumstances which endow one at the end with so high an experience?