Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 1.djvu/20

x court. There is nothing in Goethe's life finer than his awakening to the fact that he had a broader mission than that of a mere purveyor of amusements. It was after his two years' absence in Italy. He came back to Weimar in 1788, and his friends found him strangely altered, with his head high above the petty interests of the cliquey town. He was again fortunate in having a patron of generous instincts. Duke Karl August, with whom, only a few years before, Goethe had been ready to enter into the most extravagant revelries, was quick to recognise the intellectual superiority of his privy councillor, and granted him the freedom he craved.

But Germany at that time was only a parcel of jealous and insignificant principalities, loosely threaded together on the string of a common language. Goethe often mourned that he had not the broad-minded and unified public that he would have had in England. It was to his glory that, by his greatness, he was to help unify scattered Germany, for the sense of possession of such a man is a powerful concentrating influence.

In one of Goethe's letters to Friederike Oeser, whose father was director of the Academy of Design in Leipsic, there is a passage which casts a suggestive light on Goethe's character and development. It was written when he was twenty. He says:

“My present existence is devoted to philosophy. Locked in, solitary, paper and ink, pens, and a couple of books, form all my apparatus. And by this simple road I arrive at a knowledge of truth often as far as others, or even farther, with their library knowledge. A great scholar is seldom a great philosopher; and he who, with much labour, has thumbed the pages of many books, despises the easy, simple book of nature; and yet nothing is true but what is simple, certainly a poor recommendation for true wisdom. Let him who follows the simple path go on his way in silence; humility and prudence become our footsteps on this path, all of which will eventually meet with due reward.”

This shows that he had the true scientific spirit. It