Identifier: americanaunivers07newy (find matches)
Title: The Americana; a universal reference library, comprising the arts and sciences, literature, history, biography, geography, commerce, etc., of the world
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Encyclopedias and dictionaries
Publisher: New York : Scientific American Compiling Dept.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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ntellect growing daily in clearnessand in energy would not permit him to end asRousseau ended. In Gotz von Berlichingenthere goes up a crv- for freedom; it presents themore masculine side of that spirit of revolt fromthe bonds of the i8th century, that return tonature. presented in its more feminine aspectsby Werther. But by degrees it became evi-dent to Goethe that the only true ideal of free-dom is a liberation not of the passions, not ofthe intellect, but of the whole man; that thisinvolves a conciliation of all the powers andfaculties within us; and that such a conciliationcan be effected only by degrees, and by stead-fast toil. And so we find him willing during ten yearsat Weimar to undertake work which might ap-pear to be fatal to the development of his genius.To reform army administration, make goodroads, work the mines with energetic intelli-gence, restore the finances to order,— was thisfit employment for one born to be a poet ? Ex-cept a few lyrics and the prose Iphigenie,
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JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE. GOETHE these years produced no literary work of im-portance ; yet Goethe himself speaks of them ashis zweite Schriftstellerepoche,—his secondepoch as a writer. They were needful to makehim a master in the art of life, needful to puthim into possession of all his powers. Men ofgenius are quick growers; but men of the high-est genius, which includes the wisdom of humanhfe, are not speedily ripe. At 26 he was achief figure in German, even in European,literature; and from 26 to ^y he published,we may say, nothing. But he was well em-ployed in widening the basis of his existence;in organizing his faculties; in conciliating pas-sions, intellect, and will; in applying his mind tothe real world; in endeavoring to comprehendit aright; in testing and training his powers bypractical activity. A time came when he feltthat his will and skill were mature; that he wasno longer an apprentice in the art of living, buta master craftsman. Tasks that had grown irk-some and were

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