Counsels and Maxims | Page 6

we look for, we often find on a very
different path from that on which we began a vain search. Instead of
finding, as we expected, pleasure, happiness, joy, we get experience,
insight, knowledge--a real and permanent blessing, instead of a fleeting
and illusory one.
This is the thought that runs through _Wilkelm Meister_, like the bass
in a piece of music. In this work of Goethe's, we have a novel of the
intellectual kind, and, therefore, superior to all others, even to Sir
Walter Scott's, which are, one and all, _ethical_; in other words, they
treat of human nature only from the side of the will. So, too, in the
_Zauberflöte_--that grotesque, but still significant, and even
hieroglyphic--the same thought is symbolized, but in great, coarse lines,
much in the way in which scenery is painted. Here the symbol would
be complete if Tamino were in the end to be cured of his desire to
possess Tainina, and received, in her stead, initiation into the mysteries
of the Temple of Wisdom. It is quite right for Papageno, his necessary
contrast, to succeed in getting his Papagena.
Men of any worth or value soon come to see that they are in the hands
of Fate, and gratefully submit to be moulded by its teachings. They
recognize that the fruit of life is experience, and not happiness; they
become accustomed and content to exchange hope for insight; and, in
the end, they can say, with Petrarch, that all they care for is to learn:--
_Altro diletto che 'mparar, non provo_.
It may even be that they to some extent still follow their old wishes and

aims, trifling with them, as it were, for the sake of appearances; all the
while really and seriously looking for nothing but instruction; a process
which lends them an air of genius, a trait of something contemplative
and sublime.
In their search for gold, the alchemists discovered other
things--gunpowder, china, medicines, the laws of nature. There is a
sense in which we are all alchemists.


CHAPTER II
.
OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES.--SECTION 4.
The mason employed on the building of a house may be quite ignorant
of its general design; or at any rate, he may not keep it constantly in
mind. So it is with man: in working through the days and hours of his
life, he takes little thought of its character as a whole.
If there is any merit or importance attaching to a man's career, if he lays
himself out carefully for some special work, it is all the more necessary
and advisable for him to turn his attention now and then to its _plan_,
that is to say, the miniature sketch of its general outlines. Of course, to
do that, he must have applied the maxim [Greek: Gnothi seauton]; he
must have made some little progress in the art of understanding himself.
He must know what is his real, chief, and foremost object in life,--what
it is that he most wants in order to be happy; and then, after that, what
occupies the second and third place in his thoughts; he must find out
what, on the whole, his vocation really is--the part he has to play, his
general relation to the world. If he maps out important work for himself
on great lines, a glance at this miniature plan of his life will, more than
anything else stimulate, rouse and ennoble him, urge him on to action
and keep him from false paths.
Again, just as the traveler, on reaching a height, gets a connected view
over the road he has taken, with its many turns and windings; so it is
only when we have completed a period in our life, or approach the end
of it altogether, that we recognize the true connection between all our
actions,--what it is we have achieved, what work we have done. It is

only then that we see the precise chain of cause and effect, and the
exact value of all our efforts. For as long as we are actually engaged in
the work of life, we always act in accordance with the nature of our
character, under the influence of motive, and within the limits of our
capacity,--in a word, from beginning to end, under a law of _necessity_;
at every moment we do just what appears to us right and proper. It is
only afterwards, when we come to look back at the whole course of our
life and its general result, that we see the why and wherefore of it all.
When we are actually doing some great deed, or creating some
immortal work, we are not conscious of it as such; we think only of
satisfying present aims, of fulfilling the intentions we happen to have at
the time,