sage.To discuss God, apart from nature, is both difficult and dangerous. It is as if we separated the soul from the body. We know the soul only through the medium of the body, and God only through nature. Hence the absurdity as it appears to me of accusing those of absurdity who philosophically have united God with the world. For everything which exists, necessarily pertains to the essence of God, because God is the One Being whose existence includes all things. Nor does the Holy Scripture contradict this, although we differently interpret its dogmas, each according to his own views. All antiquity thought in this way, - an unanimity, which to my mind is of great significance. To me the judgment of so many men speaks highly for the rationality of the doctrine of emanation.'

In the prologue of Faust the second person of the Trinity pronounces a benediction. Instead of the Semetic form, 'May the Holy Spirit'-the corresponding philosophical speech is used, 'May the Becoming, which works and lives through all time, embrace you within the holy bonds of love.' This use of the Becoming might be related to the Hegelian philosophy, but it is said that Goethe never understood Hegel, nor had any interest in Hegel's development. In another place Mephistopheles tells Faust that he is a part of the part which in the beginning was the All-a blasphemous utterance, and as destitute of the spirit of philosophy as of the spirit of reverence. But the speaker is Mephistopheles.

6

Faust says to Margaret, when she doubts if he believes in God,~

THE ALL-EMBRACER.

Wer darf ihn nennen?
Und wer bekennen:

Ich glaub' ihn.

Wer empfinden

Und sich unterwinden

Zu sagen: ich glaub' ihn nicht?

Der Allumfasser,

Der Allerhalter,

Fasst und erhält er nicht

Dich, mich, sich selbst ?

Wölbt sich der Himmel nicht dadroben ?

Liegt die Erde nicht hierunten fest?

Und steigen freundlich blickend

Ewige Sterne nicht herauf ?

Schau' ich nicht Aug'in Auge dir,

Und drängt nicht alles

Nach Haupt und Herzen dir,

Und webt in ewigem Geheimniss

Unsichtbar sichtbar neben dir ?

Erfüll' davon dein Herz, so gross es ist,

Und wenn du ganz in dem Gefühle selig bist,
Nenn' es dann wie du willst,

Nenn's Glück! Herz! Liebe! Gott!

Ich habe keinen Namen
Dafur! Gefühl ist alles ;
Name ist Schall und Rauch,
Umnebelnd Himmelsgluth.

Who dares to name Him?
And who dares to acknowledge;
I believe Him.

Who can feel,

And presume

To say, I believe not in Him?

The One who embraces all,

The Preserver of all.

Does He not keep and preserve

Thee, me, Himself?

Does not the sky arch itself above?

Does not the earth lie firm below?

And do not friendly looking stars ascend?

Do I not behold eye in eye in thee,

And does not everything throng

Towards head and heart in thee,
And hovers in eternal mystery

Invisibly, visible near thee?

Fill with it thy heart, large as it is,

And when thou art quite blissful in that feeling,

Name it then, as thou likest,

Call it happiness, heart, love, God!

I have no name for it!

Feeling is all,

Name is sound and smoke,

Surrounding with mist the glow of heaven.

In Faust's interpretation of the first verses of S. John's gospel

we have the doctrine of creation

2 U

Geschrieben steht: "im Anfang war das Wort!"
Hier stock' ich schon! Wer hilft mir weiter fort?
Ich kann das Wort so hoch unmöglich schätzen,
Ich muss es anders übersetzen,

Wenn ich vom Geiste recht erleuchtet bin.
Geschrieben steht im Anfang war der Sinn.
Bedenke wohl die erste Zeile,

Dass deine Feder sich nicht übereile!

Ist es der Sinn, der alles wirkt und schafft?
Es sollte stehn: im Anfang war die Kraft!
Doch, auch indem ich dieses niederschreibe,
Schon warnt mich was, dass ich dabei nicht bleibe.
Mir hilt der Geist! Auf einmal seh' ich Rath
Und schreibe getrost : im Anfang war die That!

It is written-"In the beginning was the Word."
Here I am at a stand already, who will help me on ?
I cannot possibly value the word so highly,

I must translate it differently,

If I am really inspired by the Spirit.

It is written,-In the beginning was the sense.
Consider well the first line,

That your pen does not out-run you.

Is it the sense that influences and produces everything?
It should stand: In the beginning was the Power.

Yet even as I am writing this

Something warns me not to keep to it.

The Spirit comes to my aid. At once I see my way

And write confidently. In the beginning was the deed.

In some verses entitled Gott, Gemüth, Welt; God, Soul, World,

Goethe says,

Was wär' ein Gott, der nur von aussen stiesse,
Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse!
Ihm ziemt's, die Welt im Innern zu bewegen,
Natur in Sich, Sich in Natur zu hegen,

So dass was in Ihm lebt und webt und ist,
Nie Seine Kraft, nie Seinen Geist vermisst.

"What were a God who only wrought externally.
And turned the All in a circle on His finger.

It becomes Him to move the world in its interior ;
To cherish nature in Himself and Himself in nature.
So that whatsoever lives and weaves and is in Him
Never lacks His presence and His spirit.

The following is called Weltseele or World-Soul:

Vertheilet euch, nach allen Regionen,

Von diesem heil'gen Schmaus !

Begeistert reisst euch durch die nächsten Zonen

In's All und füllt es aus!

Schon schwebet ihr, in ungemess'nen Fernen,

Den sel'gen Göttertraum,

Und leuchtet neu, gesellig, unter Sternen
Im lichtbesäten Raum.

Disperse yourselves towards all regions,

From this holy feast

Inspirited take yourselves through the next zones Into all and fill it out.

Already you hover in unlimited distances

Around the blessed Divine dream,
And shine anew, sociably, under stars,
In the space sown about with light.

Then you rush about, powerful comets,
Out into the wide and distant parts
The labyrinth of suns and planets
Cuts through your path.

You seize quickly after unformed earths,
And work creatingly young,

That they get more and more animated
In this measured flight.

And whirling you carry in agitated air

The changeable veil,

And prescribe to the stone in all its pits,

The firm forms.

Now everything strives with divine holiness
To surpass itself.

The water wishes the unfruitful to be green,
And every atom lives.

And thus the night with affectionate strife is dispossessed
Of the moist vapour,

Now glow already the wide distances of paradise
In great splendour.

Soon there moves about a light lovely to behold;

A troop rich in forms,

And you are astonished on the happy meadows,
Now as the first pair.

And soon an unlimited striving

Is extinguished in a holy mutual look.

And so receive with thanks the most beautiful life,
From all into all back.

There is less theology in Schiller's poetry than in Goethe's. The following extract from one of his letters is Platonic, but not extravagant: The universe is a thought of God's. After this ideal image in His mind burst into reality and the new-born world filled up the sketch of its Creator-allow me this human repre. sentation-it became the vocation of all thinking beings to re-discover in the existent whole the original outline. To seek in the machine its regulator; in the phenomena the law of its production; in composition its several unities; and thus to trace back the building to its plan or scheme, is the highest office of contemplation. Nature has for me but one phenomenon-the thinking principle. The great composition which we call the world is to me only remarkable because it is able to indicate to me symbolically the various properties of the thinking being. Everything within me and without me is the hieroglyphic of a force, and analogous to my own. The laws of nature are the cyphers which the thinking being adopts to make himself intelligible to other thinking beings. They are but the alphabet by means of which all spirits converse with the Perfect Spirit, and with each other. Harmony, order, beauty, give me pleasure, but they put me in the active state of a possessor, because they reveal to me the presence of a reasoning and a feeling being, and reveal to me my own relation to that being. A new experiment in this kingdom of truth; gravitation, the detected circulation of the blood, the classifications of Linnæus* are to me originally just the same as an antique dug up at Herculaneum; both are reflections of a mind-new acquaintance with a being like myself. I converse with infinitude through the organ of nature, through the history of the world, and I read the soul of the artist in his Apollo.'

• Schiller seems to have supposed the Linnæan classifications natural.