CHAPTER II. MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS. THE two dramatic works noticed towards the close of the last chapter, may be said to begin the real poetic career of their author, because in them he drew from his actual experience. They will furnish us with a text for some remarks on his peculiar characteristics, the distinct recognition of which will facilitate the comprehension of his life and writings. We make a digression, but the reader will find that in thus swerving from the direct path of narrative, we are only tacking to fill our sails with wind. Frederick Schlegel (and after him Coleridge) aptly indicated a distinction, when he said that every man was born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. This distinction is often expressed in the terms subjective and objective intellects. The tendency of the objective intellect is to view things directly, positively-as what they are; the tendency of the subjective intellect is to view things ideally — as what they signify to the mind. It need scarcely be added that no mind is exclusively objective or exclusively subjective, but every mind has a dominant tendency in one or the other of these directions. One man argues from Nature upwards, starting from reality, and never long losing sight of it, even in the adventurous flights of hypothesis and speculation; another argues from the Idea downwards, starting from some ideal conception, some d priori standing-point, whence reality may be reached as a sort of visible illustration, a symbol of the deeper and higher ideal existence. Plato is an avowed and explicit preacher of this latter mode of philosophizing; Aristotle is less explicitly, but decisively, of the former mode. The Real and Ideal are thus contrasted as the termini of two opposite lines of thought. In Philosophy, in Morals and in Art, we see a constant antagonism between these two principles. Thus in Morals the Platonists are those who seek the highest morality out of human nature, instead of in the healthy development of all our tendencies, and their due co-ordination; they hope, in the suppression of integral faculties, to attain some superhuman standard. They call that Ideal which no Reality can reach, but for which we should strive. They superpose ab extra, instead of trying to develope ab intra. They draw from their own minds, or from the dogmas handed to them by tradition, an arbitrary mould, into which they attempt to fuse the organic activity of Nature. If this school had not in its favor the imperious instinct of Progress, and aspiration after a Better, it would not hold its ground. But it satisfies that craving, and thus deludes many minds into acquiescence. The poetical and enthusiastic disposition most readily acquiesces: preferring to overlook what man is, in its delight of contemplating what the poet makes him. To such a mind all conceptions of Man must have a halo round them, half mist, half sunshine; the hero must be a Demigod, in whom no valet de chambre can find a failing; the villain must be a Demon, for whom no charity can find an excuse. Not to extend this to a dissertation, let me at once say that Goethe belonged to the objective class. Everywhere in Goethe,' said Franz Horn, 'you are on firm land or - island; nowhere the infinite sea.' A better characterization was never written in one sentence. In every page of his works may be read a strong feeling for the real, the concrete, the living; and a repugnance as strong for the vague, the abstract, or the supersensuous. His constant striving was to study Nature, so as to see her directly, and not through the mists of fancy, or through the distortions of prejudice, to look at men, and into them, — to apprehend things as they were. In his conception of the universe he could not separate God from it, placing Him above it, beyond it, as the philosophers did who represented God whirling the universe round His finger, 'seeing it go.' Such a conception revolted him. He animated the universe with God; he animated fact with divine life; he saw in Reality the incarnation of the Ideal; he saw in Morality the high and harmonious action of all human tendencies; he saw in Art the highest representation of Life. Our psychology is in so chaotic a condition, that I dare not employ its language in this attempt to characterize Goethe's tendencies, lest it mislead. In lieu thereof a few descriptive sentences must suffice: -If we look through the works with critical attention, we shall observe the concrete tendency determining-first, his choice of subjects; secondly, his handling of characters; and, thirdly, his style. We shall see the operation of that law of his mind, which made the creative impulses move only in alliance with emotions he himself had experienced. His Imagination was not, like that of many others, incessantly at work in the combination and recombination of images, which could be accepted for their own sake, apart from the warrant of preliminary confrontation with fact. It demanded the confrontation; it moved with ease only on the secure ground of Reality. An illustration from science may make this distinction palpable. In science there are men whose active imaginations carry them into hypothesis and speculation, all the more easily because they do not bring hypothesis to the stern confrontation with fact. The mere delight in combining ideas suffices them: provided the deductions are logical, they seem almost indifferent to their truth. There are poets of this order; indeed most poets are of this order. Goethe was of a quite opposite tendency. In him, as in the man of positive science, an imperious desire for reality controlled the errant facility of imagination. Hence we see why he was led to portray Men and Women, instead of Demigods and Angels: no Posas and Theklas, but Egmonts and Clärchens. Hence also his portraitures carry this moral with them, in them, but have no moral' superposed no accompanying verdict as from some outstanding judge. Further, and this is a point to be insisted on, his style, both in poetry and prose, is subject to the same law. It is vivid with images, but it has scarcely any imagery.' Most poets describe objects by metaphors or comparisons; Goethe seldom tells you what an object is like, he tells you what it is. Shakespeare is very unlike Goethe in this respect. The prodigal luxuriance of his imagery often entangles, in its overgrowth, the movement of his verse. It is true, he also is eminently concrete: he sees the real object vividly, and he makes us see it vividly; but he scarcely ever paints it save in the colors of metaphor and simile. Shakespeare's imagery bubbles up like a perpetual spring: to say that it repeatedly overflows, is only to say that his mind was lured by its own sirens away from the direct path. He did not master his Pegasus at all times, but let the wild careering creature take its winged way. Goethe, on the contrary, always masters his. Perhaps because his steed had less of restive life in its veins. Not only does he master it, and ride with calmer, more assured grace; he seems so bent on reaching the goal that he scarcely thinks of anything else. To quit metaphor, he may be said to use with the utmost sparingness all the aids of imagery, and to create images of the objects, rather than images of what the objects are like. Shakespeare, like Goethe, was a decided realist. He, too, was content to let his pictures of life carry their own moral with them. He uttered no 'moral verdict;' he was no Chorus preaching on the text of what he pictured. Hence we cannot gather from his works what his opinions were. But there is this difference between him and Goethe, that his intense sympathy with the energetic passions and fierce volitions of our race made him delight in heroic characters, in men of robuster frames and more impassioned lives. Goethe, with an infusion of the best blood of Schiller, would have made a Shakespeare; but, such as Nature made him he was, not Shakespeare. Turning from these abstract considerations to the two earliest works which form the text, we observe how the youth is determined in the choice of his subject by the realistic tendency. Instead of ranging through the enchanted gardens of Armida - instead of throwing himself back into the distant Past, and escaping from the trammels of a modern subject which the confrontation of reality always makes more difficult, this boy fashions into verse his own experience, his own observation. He looks into his own heart, he peers into the byways of civilization, walking with curious observation through squalid streets and dark fearful alleys. Singular, moreover, is the absence of any fierce indignation, any cry of pain at the sight of so much corruption underlying the surface of so |