ooks are like those who have got their
knowledge of a country from the descriptions of travellers. Truth that
has been picked up from books only sticks to us like an artificial
limb, or a false tooth, or a rhinoplastic nose; the truth we have
acquired by our own thinking is like the natural member. At least, as
Goethe puts it in his verse,

Was du ererbt von deinen Vaetern hast,
Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen.

_What from thy fathers thou dost inherit, be sure thou
earn it, that so it may become thine own_.

It is only Goethe and Schiller, and especially Goethe, "the strong,
much-toiling sage, with spirit free from mists, and sane and clear,"
who combine the higher and the lower wisdom, and have skill to put
moral truths into forms of words that fix themselves with stings in
the reader's mind. All Goethe's work, whether poetry or prose, his
plays, his novels, his letters, his conversations, are richly bestrewn
with the luminous sentences of a keen-eyed, steadfast, patient,
indefatigable watcher of human life. He deals gravely and sincerely
with men. He has none of that shallow irony by which small men who
have got wrong with the world seek a shabby revenge. He tells us the
whole truth. He is not of those second-rate sages who keep their own
secrets, externally complying with all the conventions of speech and
demeanour, while privately nourishing unbridled freedom of opinion
in the inner sanctuary of the mind. He handles soberly, faithfully,
laboriously, cheerfully, every motive and all conduct. He marks
himself the friend, the well-wisher, and the helper. I will not begin
to quote from Goethe, for I should never end. The volume of _Spruche_,
or aphorisms in rhyme and prose in his collected works, is accessible
to everybody, but some of his wisest and finest are to be found in the
plays, like the well-known one in his _Tasso_, "In stillness Talent
forms itself, but Character in the great current of the world."

But here is a concentrated admonition from the volume that I have
named, that will do as well as any other for an example of his
temper--

"Wouldst fashion for thyself a seemly life?--
Then fret not over what is past and gone;
And spite of all thou mayst have lost behind,
Yet act as if thy life were just begun.
What each day wills, enough for thee to know;
What each day wills, the day itself will tell.
Do thine own task, and be therewith content;
What others do, that shalt thou fairl