o become angels,
ugly creatures labouring at our embellishment, monstrous chrysalids
trying to become butterflies. Our ideal is no longer the tranquil beauty
of the soul, it is the anguish of Laocoon fighting with the hydra of
evil. No longer are there happy and accomplished men; we are candidates,
indeed, for heaven, but on earth galley-slaves, and we row away our life
in the expectation of harbour. It seems possible that this perfecting of
which we are so proud is nothing else but a pretentious imperfection.

The "becoming" seems rather negative than positive; it is the lessening
of evil, but is not itself the good; it is a noble discontent, but is by
no means felicity. This ceaseless pursuit of an endless end is a
generous madness, but is not reason; it is the yearning for what can
never be, a touching malady, but it is not wisdom. Yet there is none who
may not achieve harmony; and when he has it, he is within the eternal
order, and represents the divine thought at least as clearly as a flower
does, or a solar system. Harmony seeks nothing that is outside herself.
She is exactly that which she should be; she expresses goodness, order,
law, truth, honour; she transcends time and reveals the eternal.

_Memories of the Golden Age_

In the world of society one must seem to live on ambrosia and to know
none but noble thoughts. Anxiety, want, passion, simply do not exist.
All realism is suppressed as brutal. It is a world which amuses itself
with the flattering illusion that it lives above the clouds and breathes
mythological air. That is why all vehemence, the cry of Nature, all
suffering, thoughtless familiarity, and every frank sign of love shock
this delicate medium like a bombshell; they shatter this collective
fabric, this palace of clouds, this enchanted architecture, just as
shrill cockcrow scatters the fairies into hiding. These fine receptions
are unconsciously a work of art, a kind of poetry, by which cultivated
society reconstructs an idyll that is age-long dead. They are confused
memories of the golden age, or aspirations after a harmony which mundane
reality has not in it to give.

_Goethe Under the Lash_

I cannot like Goethe: he has little soul. His understanding of love,
religion, duty, patriotism, is paltry and even shocking. He lacks an
ardent generosity. A central dryness, an ill-cloaked egoism show through
his supple and rich talent. True, this selfishness of his at least
respects everyone