to this effect. What
assurance, then, that this interpretation is not gratuitous?

This, first,--the "Confessions" are _there_; hence are related to the
import of the whole. But perhaps the reader thinks, with the redoubtable
Mr. Lewes, that the work is not a _whole_ at all, but a piece of
patchwork. If so, this reason will not weigh with him.

But my interpretation is conclusively affirmed in another way. _The
Wilhelm of the seventh book is no longer the Wilhelm of the fifth._ We
leave him on one side this episode, we find him on the other, and he is
not the same man. He has suffered a sea-change; for his keel has been
wetted in the waters of Eternity. The Abbe recognizes him with
difficulty.

It is the old secret. No man can look on Absolute Reality, and
live in the antecedent quality of his life. He is a new man
henceforth,--consumed and created.

And now we come to the consummate act and epoch of his life. He has
found himself; he is now to give himself, and, in giving, is to find
himself anew. He is to lose and find himself in social uses. In this
sacred act of social immersion, by which, since it can now be done
sanely, he is to be, not dissipated, but divinely assured to himself,
his spirit and Goethe's work at last rest.

The key-note to this part of the work is struck in the cool tones of
Jarno. "It is right," he says, "that a man, when he first enters upon
life, should think highly of himself, should determine to attain many
high distinctions, should endeavor to make all things possible; but when
his education has proceeded to a certain pitch, it is advantageous for
him that he learn to lose himself among a mass of men, that he learn to
live for the sake of others, and to forget himself in an activity
prescribed by duty."

Wilhelm approaches this higher act by degrees.

First, by an exalted and matured love of woman. It is not here a fume
and sweet intoxication in the blood, but a true passion of the soul, a
profound yearning to _ally_ his spirit. By an inward necessity, he must
give himself to one other, and from that other receive himself again,
made sacred with Nature's baptism. The need of this reciprocation is
stronger with him than even his election of a particular person with
whom to establish it. So, when it becomes impossible for Theresa to
accept his hand, he passes soon to Natalia, to whom, however, his
attraction is subtler and older.

On this follows the deep self-devotion of fatherhood.