Auch bin ich weit davon entfernt Dass ich von Todten was gelernt." Dass heisst, wenn ich ihn recht verstand: In the summer of 1754 the old house was entirely rebuilt, Wolfgang officiating at the ceremony of laying the foundation, dressed as a little bricklayer. The quick, observant boy found much in this rebuilding of the paternal house to interest him; he chatted with the workmen, learning their domestic circumstances, and learning something of the builder's art, which in after years so greatly occupied him. This event, moreover, led to his being sent to a friend during the restoration of the upper part of the house for the family inhabited the house during its reconstruction, which was made story by story from the ground upwards-and the event also led to his being sent to school. Viehoff thinks that Germany would have had a quite other Goethe had the child been kept at a public school till he went to the university; and quotes Gervinus to the effect that Goethe's home education prevented his ever thoroughly appreciating history, and the struggles of the masses. Not accepting the doctrine that Character is formed by Circumstance, I cannot accept the notion of school life affecting the poet to this extent. We have only to reflect how many men are educated at public schools * An exquisite epigram, which may be rendered thus: A Quidnunc boasting said: 'I follow none; I owe my wisdom to myself alone; To neither ancient nor to modern sage Am I indebted for a single page.' To place this boasting in its proper light : without there imbibing a love of history and sympathy with the masses, to see that Goethe's peculiarities must have had some other source than home education. That source lay in his character. One thing, however, he did learn at school, and that was disgust at schools. The boy carefully trained at home, morally as well as physically, had to mingle with schoolboys who were what most schoolboys are, dirty, rebellious, cruel, low in their tastes and habits. The contrast was very painful to him, and he was glad when the completion of his father's house once more enabled him to receive instruction at home. One school anecdote he relates, well illustrates his power of self-command. Fighting during school time was always severely punished. One day the teacher did not arrive at the appointed time. The boys played together till the hour was nearly over, and then three of them, left alone with Wolfgang, resolved to drive him away. They cut up a broom, and re-appeared with the switches. 'I saw their design, but I at once resolved not to resist them till the clock struck. They began pitilessly lashing my legs. I did not stir, although the pain made the minutes terribly long. My wrath deepened with my endurance, and on the first stroke of the hour I grasped one of my assailants by the hair and hurled him to the ground, pressing my knee on his back; I drew the head of the second, who attacked me behind, under my arm and nearly throttled him; with a dexterous twist I threw the third flat on the ground. They bit, scratched and kicked. But my soul was swelling with one feeling of revenge, and I knocked their heads together without mercy. A shout of murder brought the household round us. But the scattered switches and my bleeding legs bore witness to my story.' CHAPTER III. EARLY EXPERIENCES. It is profoundly false to say that Character is formed by Circumstance,' unless the phrase, with unphilosophic equivocation, include the whole complexity of Circumstances, from the creation downwards. Character is to outward Circumstance what the Organism is to the outward world living in it, but not. specially determined by it. A wondrous variety of vegetable and animal organisms live and flourish under circumstances which furnish the means of living, but do not determine the specific forms of each organism. In the same way various Characters live under identical Circumstances, excited by them, not formed by them. Each Character assimilates, from surrounding Circumstance, that which is by it assimilable, rejecting the rest; just as from the earth and air the plant draws those elements which will serve it as food, rejecting the rest. Every Biologist knows that Circumstance has a modifying influence; but he also knows that these modifications are only possible within certain limits. Abundance of food and peculiar treatment will modify the ferocity of a wild beast; but it will not make the lion a lamb. I have known a cat, living at a mill, from abundance of fish food, take spontaneously to the water; but the cat was distinctively a cat, and not an otter, although she had lost her dread of water. Instead, therefore, of saying that Man is the creature of Circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that Man is the architect of Circumstance. It is Character which builds an existence out of Circumstance. Our strength is measured by our plastic power. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels, one warehouses, another villas; bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks, until the architect can make them something else. Thus it is that in the same family, in the same circumstances, one man rears a stately edifice, while his brother, vacillating and incompetent, lives forever amid ruins the block of granite which was an obstacle on the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone on the pathway of the strong. If the reader agrees with this conception of the influence of circumstances, he will see that I was justified in laying some stress on Goethe's social position, though I controverted Viehoff and Gervinus on the point of school education. The continued absence of Want is one of those permanent and powerful conditions which necessarily modify a character. The well-fed lion loses his ferocity. But the temporary and incidental effect of school education, and other circumstances of minor importance, can never be said to modify a character; they only more or less facilitate its development. Goethe furnishes us with a striking illustration of the degree in which outward circumstances affect character. He became early the favorite of several eminent painters, was constantly in their ateliers, playing with them, and making them explain their works to him. He was, moreover, a frequent visitor at picture sales and galleries, till at last his mind became so familiarized with the subjects treated by artists, that he could at once tell what historical or biblical subject was represented in every painting he saw. Indeed, his imagination was so stimulated by familiarity with these works, that in his tenth or eleventh year he wrote a description of twelve possible pictures on the history of Joseph, and some of his conceptions were thought worthy of being executed by artists of renown. It may be further added, in anticipation, that during the whole of his life he was thrown much with painters and pictures, and was for many years tormented with the desire of becoming an artist. If, therefore, Circumstance had the power of forming Character, we ought to find him. a painter. What is the fact? The fact is, that he had not the Character which makes a painter; he had no faculty, properly speaking, for plastic art, and years of labor, aided by the instruction and counsel of the best masters, were powerless to give him even a respectable facility. All, therefore, that Circumstance did in this case, was to give his other faculties the opportunity of exercising themselves in art; it did not create the special faculty required. Circumstance can create no faculty: it is food, not nutrition; opportunity, not character. Other boys, besides Goethe, heard the Lisbon earthquake eagerly discussed; but they had not their religious. doubts awakened by it, as his were awakened in his sixth year. This catastrophe, which, in 1755, spread consternation over Europe, he has described as having greatly perturbed him. The narratives he heard of a magnificent capital suddenly smitten-churches, houses, towers, fallen with a crash the bursting land vomiting flames and smoke and sixty thousand souls perishing in an instant - shook his faith in the beneficence of Providence. 'God, the creator and preserver of heaven and earth,' he says, 'whom the first article of our creed declared to be so wise and benignant, had not displayed paternal care in thus consigning both the just and the unjust to the same destruction. - |