dualism of Christianity
and the whole mediaeval period. But as Goethe is frequently looked upon
as a _monist_, my proposition that he was a dualist _in eroticis_ will
possibly be rejected, in spite of the fact that his emotional life is
revealed to us with great lucidity. His first important work, his
_Werther_, which is also one of the most important monuments of
sentimental love, contains the germs of love as we understand it; the
love which is no longer content to look upon sexuality and soul as two
opposed principles, but strives to blend them in the person of the
beloved. I will revert to _Werther_ later on. This third stage, love in
the modern sense, is programmatically established (as it were) in
_Elective Affinities_, but all the rest of the very abundant evidence of
his emotional life exhibits the typically dualistic feeling. Many of his
early poems evidence sexuality pure and simple; in the _Venetian
Epigrams_ and in the _Roman Elegies_ it is even held up as a positive
value. In the third Elegy, for instance, the poet's sensuality is linked
directly to the famous lovers of antiquity, and everything which aspires
beyond it is rejected. In the same way his _West-Eastern Divan_ is
characterised by a gay sensuality with homo-sexual tendencies.

The sensual quality of Goethe's eroticism was partly spent in his
relationship with Christiane Vulpius. The following passage, which forms
an interesting counterpart to Goethe's famous correspondence with
Charlotte von Stein, is taken from a letter written to Christiane
Vulpius during his absence from home. "The beds everywhere are very
wide, and you would have no reason for complaint, as you sometimes have
at home. Oh, my sweet heart! There is no such happiness on earth as
being together."

If Christiane represented sensuality, unrelieved by any other feeling,
Frau von Stein represented the most important object of Goethe's craving
for spiritual love. These two liaisons were to some extent
contemporaneous; the _Roman Elegies_ and the famous letters to Charlotte
von Stein were written at the same period. When she reproached him with
his love-affair with Christiane, he replied with consistent dualism:
"And what sort of an affair is it? Whose interests are suffering by it?"
Frau von Stein, his senior by seven years, was thirty-four years old,
and mother of seven children when Goethe first met her. According to
Schiller she "can never have been beautiful," and in a letter to