Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/150

Rh. The two cannot wholly be harmonized. The highest forms of activity imply self-sacrifice, drudgery, routine, cool-headed calculation. The highest forms of emotion, pursued by themselves, intoxicate and enervate. It is the purpose of Goethe to lead his hero through the various stages of emotional life, for the sake of making him prefer in the end a mode of action to all forms of simple emotion. The result is to be a man above the deadness of ordinary work-a-day realism, yet as devoted to toil as the stupidest realist. There is to be a free surrender of a full self to the service of some high end. Nothing is lacking to the conquest over pessimism, except the clear statement of that for which the converted Faust is to work. The goal of activity once found, the problem will be solved, and the devil’s wager lost. But the dim allegorical suggestions of the second part will not suffice to give us the account of what is wanted. Faust is to work for human progress, and progress means the existence of a whole nation of hard-laboring, fearless men who fight forever for their freedom. To have been the father of such a people is the highest blessedness. Good, indeed, we say; but to have wrought by the devil’s aid, through magic and oppression, is this the highest? Is this the type of the best activity? And is the great problem after all really solved? For what is the ultimate good of the eternal warfare with nature in which mankind are thus left? Faust leaves behind him a nation of toilers, whose business it will be to build dikes to keep the sea out. A worthy end of romantic hopes, truly! That Goethe