Religious Opinions of Goethe.

503 with the Highest. This idea of doing without the love of the Supreme Being, is as arrogantly self-sufficient in spirit, as it is unphilosophical in principle. It ill becomes a creature who owes being, understanding, affection-all, to the bounty of God, to assume indifference to his regard, or to refuse to supplicate further bestowments,—too proud to be laid under further obligations to the Infinite. A man who has from the first been heaped with benefits-whose debt of obligation is past his power to calculate, affects disinterestedness as though he were self-originated, selfpreserved, the creator of some rival universe. Or, if it be not pride which affects the sublimity of an impossible virtue, a perverse irrationality alone can lay down such a proposition. For there can be no love on our part to God without love on his part The veriest Deist will acknowledge that the divine goodness has been beforehand with him. We know what love means, only because we are made in his image who is love. Gravitation is not more surely a law than the co-operation of infinite and finite in the elevation of the latter. Such an acquiescence as that Spinoza inculcates, is an acquiescence in the practical stultification of man's highest aspirations. If by this maxim he meant that a man ought not to test the efficacy of prayer by petitioning that he may win a lottery-ticket, it is a sorry truism. If it means more, it is a high-sounding folly.

Goethe fell early into the common mistake of regarding faith as a mere sentiment, independent of truth or falsehood. He opposed to faith, knowledge,-as though we could believe that of which we knew nothing. The mere fact of faith was enough for him: let a man only believe something or other, no matter what. And it is not difficult to see how the teaching of Spinoza should have landed his pupil in an absurdity so palpable. According to Goethe's guide, all the symbols, terms, propositions, &c., which men may use, fall so infinitely short of expressing the Infinite, that it makes little matter which of those intrinsically worthless counters a man takes up. Let one take a blue, another a red, a third a yellow,-none of them can derive from these bits of paste. board, bone, or tinsel, a conception of the rainbow he has never seen. The varieties of positive religion are accordingly matters of circumstance merely, of individual taste and choice. Hence the indifference of pantheism.

The fallacy which conducts to such a result is obvious. It is true that no finite sign adequately expresses the Infinite. But such signs are of two kinds. Some truly render a divine characteristic, on their smaller scale. These are relatively true. Others are not merely defective in compass, but also in proportion. They darken or distort what they profess to interpret. These are

relatively false. There is, therefore, an objective religious truth for men. There are certain signs to be chosen, certain others to be shunned. The reverse of Goethe's assertion is the truth. The important point is what a man believes concerning God. The word 'father' is a faithful sign, as far as it goes. But the word 'tyrant' substitutes an idol for the true God. Man does not need revelation to give him a belief in God; he does need it to inform his ignorance and correct his misconceptions.

By reasoning equally superficial would Goethe (and some of his thorough-going admirers with him) defend his tendency to pantheism. He fancied that to give personality to God was to banish the Creator from his work, and to represent him as sitting on high, seeing the world go.' The Christian theist, however, believes that God is in the world as well as above it. In fact, to remove or impair our apprehension of the personality of God is to remove him farther from us. For the God with whom the heart communes is the near, the besetting God. The abstraction called God, which waves in the grass on which we trample, is far away. The friend a hundred miles distant is nearer to the spirit -the true self, than the house wherein the body dwells. Mere physical proximity effects no nearness in the domain of spirit. Sympathy is contact. In nature is no sympathy, only the imperfect sign of the sympathy which is elsewhere.

Altogether praiseworthy is the indifference of Goethe to the disputes between the rival philosophies of his time. It cost him little to renounce the pursuit after the unknowable and the unattainable. But the renunciation was not less wise and modest, the example not less wholesome. Through a long, a happy, and a famous life, he was practically reminding his countrymen that they might do better than worry themselves to death about Ego and Non-Ego. He enriched with original creations a native literature, only too prone to imitation. He took art as his province, and in that province did manful and laborious service. He did his best to correct the morbidly subjective tendency of his nation and his time. Rarely did he lose sight of his main purpose-to awaken a taste for simplicity and nature. He is not to be blamed for regarding it as his mission to write books in quiet. Why should he allow himself to be driven. distracted by the Great Popkins question,' or any petty squabble of the kind? Let him do his work, and let others do theirs. But thus much conceded, it must be said that this manysided Goethe was grievously onesided in other respects. His aspirations ascended but a little way above the visible and actual. Of the material he was insatiable; for the spiritual he had little relish. He disarranged the functions of life. Art stood in the place of Virtue.

Want of Sympathy with Heroism.

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Beauty sat above Principle. From this error, more than all the rest, lies a danger in his great example. Degenerate Greece grew weak of old, and fallen Italy has long been feeble, in proportion as the pleasures of taste have been allowed to displace the sterner duties of life. Goethe resembles in his ethnic culture, classic taste, and southern temperament, those graceful scholars and poets who adorned the courts of Lorenzo de Medici and Leo the Tenth. However superior his genius, his aim rose little above. theirs. To expect that such serene optimists would step forward as patriots or reformers were unreasonable. But it is not unreasonable to expect of any thoughtful man that the demands of the spiritual nature should be paramount,-not all but utterly unheeded. It is not unreasonable to require that when any great effort is made by truth against falsehood, by freedom against slavery, that he should take some pains to understand the nature of the conflict, and testify some appreciation of the interests at stake. Those strong and foremost natures who bear for others the brunt of progress are entitled, at least, to the sympathy and the good word of those who sit at home at ease. Many who would be themselves unequal to such self-sacrifice, are inwardly elevated by the admiration they render to the martyrs and the heroes of the past. But even of such safe sympathy and praise Goethe is singularly sparing. The same defect which rendered him so indifferent to the struggle of the eighteenth century, would have prevented his espousing the cause of progress in any of the preceding. No party, in any time, has in its possession all the truth. Only the zealot is blind to the faults of the social section with which he acts. But thus much is certain, that in some quarter a preponderance of truth is to be found. The search should be made; and that cause espoused, whatever be its name. Such search Goethe might have undertaken, such service he might have rendered, without neglecting his personal vocation as poet. Mr. Lewes's book will contribute to reemov some prejudices which have been extensively entertained against Goethe. But it would be difficult to clear him from the charges to which we have adverted. With defects of a kind so grave, the character of Goethe can be upheld as a specimen of manhood, only by ignoring the highest spiritual relationship of man. He remains for ever an example of consummate culture in one chosen walk, but far indeed from that higher completeness of which Milton stands almost the sole example among poets.

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ART. IX.-The Credulities of Scepticism. A Lecture, delivered at Exeter Hall, by the REV. ROBERT VAUGHAN, D.D. Nisbet.

FOR reasons we need not mention, it was not our purpose to call attention of any sort to this publication in these pages. But slight as the performance may seem-consisting necessarily of the merest sketch on a large subject-the exposure it presents has been felt to be very disagreeable. Some scribbling has appeared upon it betraying more temper than intelligence, and the poor author is warned of something much more terrible to come.* We must be permitted to say, however, that we are far from regarding what has been done as something which should not have been done. Indeed, we have regretted often that a pledge made to our readers long since, to do something of the same sort in this journal, has not been redeemed.+ The credulity of many modern sceptics, even of such as are conspicuous leaders in that school, is such as few men suspect, and all men should know.

In the above lecture on this subject, the lecturer is said to be chargeable with two grave faults. He is said to have misrepresented the philosophical sceptic, purely with the view of making him appear contemptible; and to have exhibited the religious sceptic under aspects tending, not so much to convert him by argument, as to exasperate him by exposing him to ridicule. The first of these charges is not true,-the second may have some truth in it, but it is truth which admits of such explanation as should preclude it, we think, from being a ground of censure.

It is a very naughty thing, it seems, for any man to affirm * One of the Scriblerus authorities to whom reference is made above is a writer in the Saturday Review. This new periodical,' a friend writes, owes its origin to a few young university-men, who have money to expend upon their hobby, whatever may be said of their wit. What they do, or get done, is meant to be done with surpassing cleverness. The intention, indeed, in this respect, is so obvious, that it defeats its own purpose. The politics of the publication are peculiar, especially as being those of gentlemen so aspiring. They consist in a seventh-day worship of an old woman, known in the upper circles as Lady Aberdeen. From this cause, or from some other, the circulation of the work does not, I suspect, answer expectation. I infer this from the fact that it is found necessary to hunt from week to week for some subject that may do for a spicy piece of personality, or for a free use of the tomahawk. This expedient is not new; but men who understand such matters generally construe it as a sign of distress. Unless, however, something much better is done in this way than is done by the reviewer of the Credulities of Scepticism, there is little room to think that this high-minded policy, so befitting gentlemen fresh from their academic bowers, will be successful. Indeed, I should not be surprised to find some wag ere long suggest that the unmeaning title the Saturday Review-be taken down, and that the Slatternday be set up in its stead.' We obscure country folk who write for the British Quarterly, of course know nothing of such high matters as the secrets of the London Press. Vol. xv. p. 372.

Philosophical Scepticism.

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concerning the philosophical sceptic, that were he consistent he should so far distrust his senses as not to credit their verdict when they seem to teach him that there is really a difference between midday and midnight, and between land and water. Now every man familiar with such speculations will be aware that there are degrees in philosophical scepticism, and that there are sceptics who may take exception to this language with some appearance of justice. But can the same be said of others? The author of the lecture before us has said that the man who is sceptical enough to deny the existence of matter, must be credulous enough to account the common sense conviction of mankind on that point a great falsehood-á falsehood, as experience shows, inseparable from man's nature. But exception has been taken to the statement that such is the notion common to mankind. The question has been asked, and with a great air of authority-do you mean to say that, when we take away from a piece of paper colour, form, weight, and all its other properties, that the essence or substans of the paper remains? If this question has any meaning as so put, it must mean that, when the paper properties mentioned are taken away, nothing remains. The colour was the colour of nothing, the form the form of nothing, the weight the weight of nothing! The lecturer says that this is not the common belief, nor, in his judgment, the true one; that the intuitive belief of men generally is, that under all such properties of matter, there lies the substance of matter, though they do not pretend to know, have never attempted perhaps to ascertain, what that substance is. This, as every one knows, was the 'common sense' ground taken by Dr. Reid on this subject, and taken, we think, with full warrant and with success. The idealist, indeed, endeavours to persuade us that this cannot be the common belief, seeing that the common mind cannot comprehend what is involved in it. But if we are to conclude that men believe in nothing of which this may be said, the creed, not only of the common people, but of some other people, is likely to be a very short one. We have no scruple in saying that the common belief is, that the properties of matter are the properties of something, not the properties of nothing-that matter, and the properties of matter, are not the same thing.

But take the contrary ground. Suppose the properties of matter, as they are called, to be the properties of nothing. What you have thus done with matter you may do with mind. Denude mind of its phenomena, its thought, memory, imagination, and so on, and you have nothing left; just as by denuding matter of its qualities you have nothing left. So you have neither matter nor mind. It is nothing that thinks, nothing that