never have broken loose from primeval Nothingness.

That is ultimately Goethe's contribution to the disputes about what
we call "God." The name does not matter. "Feeling is all in all. The
name is sound and smoke." "God," or "the Good," is to Goethe
simply the eternal stream of life, working slowly upwards, onwards,
to unknown goals. All that opposes itself to this Life-stream is evil.
Morality, a man-made local convention, is our present blundering
method of assisting this great Force, and preventing its sterility, or
dissipation. In his conception of the nature of this Life-stream
Goethe is more Catholic and more subtle than Nietzsche.

_Self-realization?_ Certainly! That is an aspect of it which was not
likely to be forgotten by the great Egoist whose sole object, as he
confessed, was to "build up the Pyramid of his Existence" from the
broadest possible base. But not only self-realization. The "dying to
live" of the Christian, as well as "the rising above one's body" of the
Platonist, have their part there. Ascetism itself, with all its degrees
of passionate or philosophical purity, is as much an evocation of the
world-spirit--of the essential nature of the System of Things--as is
the other.

It is, of course, ultimately, quite a mad hope to desire to _convert_
"the Spirit that Denies." He, too, under the Lord, is an accomplice of
the Life-stream. He helps it forward, even while he opposes himself
to it, just as a bulwark of submerged rocks make the tide leap
landward with more foaming fury!

Goethe's idea of the "Eternal Feminine" leading us "upward and on"
is not at all the sentimental nonsense which Nietzsche fancied it. In a
profound sense it is absolutely true. Nor need the more anti-feminist
among us be troubled by such a Truth. We have just seen that the
Devil himself is a means, and a very essential means, for leading us
"upward and on."

Goethe is perfectly right. The "love of women," though a destructive
force, and a frightful force as far as certain kinds of "art" and
"philosophy" are concerned, cannot be looked upon as anything but
"a provocation to creation," when the whole large scheme of
existence is taken into account.

I think myself that it is easy to make too much of Goethe's
Pantheism. The Being he worshipped was simply "Whatever
Mystery" lies behind the ocean of Life. And if no "mystery" lies
behind the ocean of life,--very well! A Goethean disciple is able,
then, to worship Life, with