Autobiography of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Page 6

fight better; in which wise may it not rank as
a useful stimulant to man, along with Opium and Scotch Whisky, the
manufacture of which is allowed by law? In Heaven's name, then, let
Poetry be preserved.
With Religion, however, it fared somewhat worse. In the eyes of
Voltaire and his disciples, Religion was a superfluity, indeed a nuisance.
Here, it is true, his followers have since found that he went too far; that
Religion, being a great sanction to civil morality, is of use for keeping
society in order, at least the lower classes, who have not the feeling of
Honour in due force; and therefore, as a considerable help to the
Constable and Hangman, /ought/ decidedly to be kept up. But such
toleration is the fruit only of later days. In those times, there was no
question but how to get rid of it, root and branch, the sooner the better.
A gleam of zeal, nay we will call it, however basely alloyed, a glow of
real enthusiasm and love of truth, may have animated the minds of
these men, as they looked abroad on the pestilent jungle of Superstition,
and hoped to clear the earth of it forever. This little glow, so alloyed, so
contaminated with pride and other poor or bad admixtures, was the last
which thinking men were to experience in Europe for a time. So it is
always in regard to Religious Belief, how degraded and defaced soever:
the delight of the Destroyer and Denier is no pure delight, and must
soon pass away. With bold, with skilful hand, Voltaire set his torch to
the jungle: it blazed aloft to heaven; and the flame exhilarated and
comforted the incendiaries; but, unhappily, such comfort could not
continue. Ere long this flame, with its cheerful light and heat, was gone:
the jungle, it is true, had been consumed; but, with its entanglements,
its shelter and its spots of verdure also; and the black, chill, ashy

swamp, left in its stead, seemed for a time a greater evil than the other.
In such a state of painful obstruction, extending itself everywhere over
Europe, and already master of Germany, lay the general mind, when
Goethe first appeared in Literature. Whatever belonged to the finer
nature of man had withered under the Harmattan breath of Doubt, or
passed away in the conflagration of open Infidelity; and now, where the
Tree of Life once bloomed and brought fruit of goodliest savour there
was only barrenness and desolation. To such as could find sufficient
interest in the day-labour and day-wages of earthly existence; in the
resources of the five bodily Senses, and of Vanity, the only mental
sense which yet flourished, which flourished indeed with gigantic
vigour, matters were still not so bad. Such men helped themselves
forward, as they will generally do; and found the world, if not an
altogether proper sphere (for every man, disguise it as he may, has a
/soul/ in him), at least a tolerable enough place; where, by one item or
another, some comfort, or show of comfort, might from time to time be
got up, and these few years, especially since they were so few, be spent
without much murdering. But to men afflicted with the 'malady of
Thought,' some devoutness of temper was an inevitable heritage; to
such the noisy forum of the world could appear but an empty,
altogether insufficient concern; and the whole scene of life had become
hopeless enough. Unhappily, such feelings are yet by no means so
infrequent with ourselves, that we need stop here to depict them. That
state of Unbelief from which the Germans do seem to be in some
measure delivered, still presses with incubus force on the greater part of
Europe; and nation after nation, each in its own way, feels that the first
of all moral problems is how to cast it off, or how to rise above it.
Governments naturally attempt the first expedient; Philosophers, in
general, the second.
The Poet, says Schiller, is a citizen not only of his country, but of his
time. Whatever occupies and interests men in general, will interest him
still more. That nameless Unrest, the blind struggle of a soul in
bondage, that high, sad, longing Discontent, which was agitating every
bosom, had driven Goethe almost to despair. All felt it; he alone could
give it voice. And here lies the secret of his popularity; in his deep,

susceptive heart, he felt a thousand times more keenly what every one
was feeling; with the creative gift which belonged to him as a poet, he
bodied it forth into visible shape, gave it a local habitation and a name;
and so made himself the spokesman of his generation. /Werter/ is but
the cry of that dim, rooted pain, under which