he is now almost ashamed of having ever held. He does not
remember when he changed them, or why, but somehow they have passed away
from him.

In communities these changes are often very striking. The
transformation, for instance, of the England of Cromwell into the
England of Queen Anne, or of the New England of Cotton Mather into the
New England of Theodore Parker and Emerson, was very extraordinary, but
it would be very difficult to say in detail what brought it about or
when it began. Lecky has some curious observations in his "History of
Rationalism" on these silent changes in new beliefs, apropos of the
disappearance of the belief in witchcraft. Nobody could say what had
swept it away; but it appeared that in a certain year people were ready
to burn old women as witches, and a few years later were ready to laugh
at or pity any one who thought old women could be witches. "At one
period," says he, "we find every one disposed to believe in witches; at
a later period we find this predisposition has silently passed away."
The belief in witchcraft may perhaps be considered a somewhat violent
illustration, like the change in public opinion about slavery in this
country. But there can be no doubt that it is talk--somebody's,
anybody's, everybody's talk--by which these changes are wrought, by
which each generation comes to feel and think differently from its
predecessor.

No one ever talks freely about anything without contributing something,
let it be ever so little, to the unseen forces which carry the race on
to its final destiny. Even if he does not make a positive impression, he
counteracts or modifies some other impression, or sets in motion some
train of ideas in some one else, which helps to change the face of the
world. So I shall, in disregard of the great laudation of silence which
filled the earth in the days of Carlyle, say that one of the functions
of an educated man is to talk; and of course he should try to talk
wisely.

[Illustration: GOETHE.]

GOETHE

(1749-1832)

BY EDWARD DOWDEN

Johann Wolfgang Goethe was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main on August 28th,
1749, and died at Weimar on March 22d, 1832. His great life, extending
over upwards of fourscore years, makes him a man of the eighteenth
century and also of the nineteenth. He belongs not only to German but to
European literature. And in the history of European literature his
position is that of successor to Voltaire and Rousseau. H