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Updated: May 25, 2025
Goethe's explanation is still more picturesque, but I doubt if it is a bit better philosophy. "I compare the earth and her atmosphere," he said to Eckermann, "to a great living being perpetually inhaling and exhaling. If she inhale she draws the atmosphere to her, so that, coming near her surface, it is condensed to clouds and rain. This state I call water-affirmative."
In looking back on that part of the Farbenlehre which he had himself called 'Polemical' in the title, he said to Eckermann: 'I by no means disavow my severe dissections of the Newtonian statements; it was necessary at the time and will also have its value hereafter; but at bottom all polemical action is repugnant to my nature, and I can take but little pleasure in it.
The Suabian hews into him lustily. I hope you do not side with him." "By no means. He goes too far. He blames the poet for not being a politician. He might as well blame him for not being a missionary to the Sandwich Islands." "And what do you think of Eckermann?" "I think he is a toady; a kind of German Boswell. Goethe knew he was drawing his portrait, and attitudinized accordingly.
Arnold enlarges is the remark just quoted which Goethe made about Byron to Eckermann: "so bald er reflectirt ist er ein Kind" AS SOON AS HE REFLECTS HE IS A CHILD. Goethe, it is true, did say this; but the interpretation of the saying depends upon the context, which Mr. Arnold omits.
Once, and once only, if I remember rightly, in his conversations with Eckermann, the cause of mankind elicits an expression of faith and hope from him, in some reference to the future of America.
"'Lord Byron, said Eckermann, 'is no wiser when he takes 'Faust' to pieces and thinks you found one thing here, the other there. 'The greater part of those fine things cited by Lord Byron, Goethe replied, 'I have never even read; much less did I think of them when I was writing "Faust." But Lord Byron is only great as a poet; as soon as he reflects he is a child.
And once more, when we pass from the seventeenth century of Corneille and Dryden to the nineteenth century when the novel has asserted its rivalry with the drama, we find the wise Goethe declaring to Eckermann the doctrine which is now winning acceptance everywhere.
And when my moral nature requires a Personal God there is room for That also?" When one comes to speak of Faust, it is necessary for us to remember the words the great man himself used to his follower in speaking of this masterpiece. Eckermann teased him for interpretations. "What," said he to Goethe, "is the leading Idea in the Poem?"
He urged Eckermann to study English that he might read him; remarking, "A character of such eminence has never existed before, and probably will never come again. The beauty of Cain is such as we shall not see a second time in the world.... Byron issues from the sea-waves ever fresh.
For a much saner view of this question one should go back to honest Eckermann, who reports Goethe as saying to him in 1824: 'Schiller, who, between ourselves, was much more of an aristocrat than I, has the remarkable fortune to count as a particular friend of the people. This is exactly right.
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