und, to use the words which
he puts into the mouth of Faust, that while it freed him from his
superstitions, at the same time it made the world empty and dismal
beyond endurance. In the mechanical philosophy which presented itself in
the _Systeme de la Nature_ as a positive substitute for his lost faith,
he found only that which filled his poet's soul with horror. 'It
appeared to us,' he says, 'so grey, so cimmerian and so dead that we
shuddered at it as at a ghost. We thought it the very quintessence of
old age. All was said to be necessary, and therefore there was no God.
Why not a necessity for a God to take its place among the other
necessities!' On the other hand, the ordinary teleological theology,
with its external architect of the world and its externally determined
designs, could not seem to Goethe more satisfactory than the mechanical
philosophy. He joined for a time in Rousseau's cry for the return to
nature. But Goethe was far too well balanced not to perceive that such a
cry may be the expression of a very artificial and sophisticated state
of mind. It begins indeed in the desire to throw off that which is
really oppressive. It ends in a fretful and reckless revolt against the
most necessary conditions of human life. Goethe lived long enough to see
in France that dissolution of all authority, whether of State or Church,
for which Rousseau had pined. He saw it result in the return of a
portion of mankind to what we now believe to have been their primitive
state, a state in which they were 'red in tooth and claw.' It was not
that paradisaic state of love and innocence, which, curiously enough,
both Rousseau and the theologians seem to have imagined was the
primitive state.

The thought of the discipline and renunciation of our lower nature in
order to the realisation of a higher nature of mankind is written upon
the very face of the second part of _Faust_. Certain passages in
_Dichtung_ and _Wahrheit_ are even more familiar. 'Our physical as well
as our social life, morality, custom, knowledge of the world,
philosophy, religion, even many an accidental occurrence in our daily
life, all tell us that we must renounce.' 'Renunciation, once for all,
in view of the eternal,' that was the lesson which he said made him feel
an atmosphere of peace breathed upon him. He perceived the supreme moral
prominence of certain Christian ideas, especially that of the atonement
as he interpreted it. 'It is altogether strange to