Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 5.djvu/73

Rh surround us. In short, I succeeded in gaining the reward of the inventors and narrators of such productions: namely, in awakening curiosity, in fixing the attention, in provoking overhasty solutions of impenetrable riddles, in deceiving expectations, in confusing by the more wonderful which came into the place of the wonderful, in arousing sympathy and fear, in causing anxiety, in moving, and, at last, by the change of what was apparently earnest into an ingenious and cheerful jest, in satisfying the mind, and in leaving the imagination materials for new images, and the understanding materials for further reflection.

Should any one hereafter read this tale in print, and doubt whether it could have produced such an effect, let him remember, that, properly speaking, man is only called upon to act in the present. Writing is an abuse of language: reading silently to one's self is a sorry substitute for speech. Man effects all he can upon man by his personality, youth is most powerful upon youth, and hence also arise the purest influences. It is these which enliven the world, and allow it neither morally nor physically to perish. I had inherited from my father a certain didactic loquacity; from my mother the faculty of representing, clearly and forcibly, everything that the imagination can produce or grasp, of giving a freshness to known stories, of inventing and relating others,—nay, of inventing in the course of narration. By my paternal endowment I was for the most part annoying to the company; for who likes to listen to the opinions and sentiments of another, especially a youth, whose judgment, from defective experience, always seems insufficient? My mother, on the contrary, had thoroughly qualified me for social conversation. The emptiest tale has in itself a high charm for the imagination, and the smallest quantity of solid matter is thankfully received by the understanding.