The Youth of Goethe | Page 7

for the tastes which he acquired under his father's
roof remained with him to the end. What strikes us in his course of
study is its desultoriness and its comprehensiveness. At one time and
another he gained an acquaintance with English, French, Italian, Latin,

Greek, and Hebrew. He read widely in history, secular and sacred, and
in the later stage of his early studies he took up law at the express
desire of his father. It was the aim of his father's scheme of education
that accomplishments should form an essential part of it. So his son
was taught music, drawing, dancing, riding, and fencing. But there was
another side to Goethe's early training which, in his case, deserves to be
specially emphasised. A striking characteristic of Goethe's writings is
the knowledge they display of the whole range of the manual arts, and
this knowledge he owed to the circumstances of his home. His father, a
virtuoso with the means of gratifying his tastes, freely employed artists
of all kinds to execute designs of his own conception; and, as part of
his son's education, entrusted him with the superintendence of his
commissions. Thus, in accordance with modern ideas, were combined
in Goethe's training the practical and the theoretical--a combination
which is the distinguishing characteristic of his productive activity.
Generally considered, we see that the course of his studies was such as
in any circumstances he would himself have probably followed. Under
no conditions would Goethe have been content to restrict himself to a
narrow field of study and to give the necessary application for its
complete mastery. As it was, the multiplicity of his studies supplied the
foundation for the manifold productivity of his maturer years. In no
branch of knowledge was he ever a complete master; he devoted a large
part of his life to the study of Greek and Roman antiquity, yet he never
acquired a scholar's knowledge either of Greek or Roman literature.[10]
If on these subjects he has contributed many valuable reflections, it was
due to the insight of genius which apprehends what passes the range of
ordinary vision.
[Footnote 9: It was doubtless due to the absence of strict drill in his
youth that Goethe, as he himself tells us, never acquired the art of
punctuating his own writings.]
[Footnote 10: Goethe said of himself that he had no "grammatical
vein."]
A striking fact in Goethe's account of his early years is the emphasis he
lays on the religious side of his education. Judging from the length at

which he treats the subject, indeed, we are bound to assume that in his
own estimation religion was the most important element in his early
training, and in the case of one who came eventually to be known as the
"great Pagan" the fact is remarkable. Had he sat down to write the
narrative of these years at an earlier period of his life--after his return,
say, from his Italian journey--we may conceive that in his then
anti-Christian spirit he would have put these early religious experiences
in a somewhat different light, and would hardly have assigned to them
the same importance. But when he actually addressed himself to tell the
story of his development, he had passed out of his anti-Christian phase,
and was fully convinced of the importance of religion in human culture.
Regarding this portion of his Autobiography, as regarding others, we
may have our doubts as to how far his record is coloured by his
opinions when he wrote it. Yet, after every reserve, there can be no
question that religion engaged both his intellect and his emotions as a
boy; and the fact is conclusive that religious instincts were not left out
of his nature.[11]
[Footnote 11: With reference to what he says of his Biblical studies he
wrote as follows to a correspondent (January 30th, 1812) [Transcriber's
Note: corrected error "1912"]: "Dass Sie meine asiatischen
Weltanfänge so freundlich aufnehmen, ist mir von grossem Wert. Es
schlingt sich die daher für mich gewonnene Kultur durch mein ganzes
Leben...."]
There was nothing in the influence of his home that was specially fitted
to awaken religious feeling or to occasion abnormal spiritual
experiences. In religion as in everything else the father was a formalist,
and such religious views as he held were those of the Aufklärung, for
which all forms of spiritual emotion were the folly of unreason.
Religion was a permanent and sustaining influence in the life of
Goethe's mother, but her religion consisted simply in a cheerful
acquiescence in the decrees of Providence. Of the soul's trials and
sorrows, as they are recorded in the annals of the religious life, her
nature was incapable, and she was always perfectly at ease in Zion. By
his mother, therefore, the son could not be deeply moved