s minorem
Consiliis animum fatigas?_[1]

[Footnote 1: Odes II. xi.]

The cause of this commonest of all follies is that optical illusion of
the mind from which everyone suffers, making life, at its beginning,
seem of long duration; and at its end, when one looks back over the
course of it, how short a time it seems! There is some advantage in
the illusion; but for it, no great work would ever be done.

Our life is like a journey on which, as we advance, the landscape
takes a different view from that which it presented at first,
and changes again, as we come nearer. This is just what
happens--especially with our wishes. We often find something else,
nay, something better than what we are looking for; and what we look
for, we often find on a very different path from that on which we
began a vain search. Instead of finding, as we expected, pleasure,
happiness, joy, we get experience, insight, knowledge--a real and
permanent blessing, instead of a fleeting and illusory one.

This is the thought that runs through _Wilkelm Meister_, like the bass
in a piece of music. In this work of Goethe's, we have a novel of the
_intellectual_ kind, and, therefore, superior to all others, even to
Sir Walter Scott's, which are, one and all, _ethical_; in other words,
they treat of human nature only from the side of the will. So, too,
in the _Zauberfloete_--that grotesque, but still significant, and even
hieroglyphic--the same thought is symbolized, but in great, coarse
lines, much in the way in which scenery is painted. Here the symbol
would be complete if Tamino were in the end to be cured of his desire
to possess Tainina, and received, in her stead, initiation into the
mysteries of the Temple of Wisdom. It is quite right for Papageno, his
necessary contrast, to succeed in getting his Papagena.

Men of any worth or value soon come to see that they are in the hands
of Fate, and gratefully submit to be moulded by its teachings. They
recognize that the fruit of life is experience, and not happiness;
they become accustomed and content to exchange hope for insight; and,
in the end, they can say, with Petrarch, that all they care for is to
learn:--

_Altro diletto che 'mparar, non provo_.

It may even be that they to some extent still follow their old wishes
and aims, trifling with them, as it were, for the sake of appearances;
all the while really and seriously looking for nothing but
instruction; a process which lends them an air