The maxim that increases
knowledge and enriches literature is of slow and rare appearance; it
springs from a fine faculty of observation which is in no one's
arbitrament, and only less rare than the gift of utterance which adds
charm to a thought that itself strikes home with the power of
impregnable truth. No amount or intensity of effort will alone produce
it; but to the mind of genius it comes like a sudden revelation,
flashing its light on a long course of patient attention. "What we call
_Discovery_," says Goethe, "is the serious exercise and activity of an
original feeling for truth. It is a synthesis of world and mind, giving
the most blessed assurance of the eternal harmony of things."

It is, then, depth and truth and sanity of observation which chiefly
mark these sayings of Goethe. It is no concern of his to dazzle the mind
by the brilliance of his wit; nor does he labour to say things because
they are striking, but only because they are true. He is always in
contact with realities, always aiming at truth; and he takes a kindly
and a generous view of the world. He has none of the despair that
depresses, none of the malice that destroys. There are writers who
profess to honour a lofty ideal by a cynical disparagement of everything
that falls short of it; who unveil the selfish recesses of the heart as
a mistaken stimulus to its virtues; who pay their tribute to great work
by belittling human endeavour. Goethe shows us a more excellent way.
Touched with a profound feeling of the worth of life, the wisdom of
order, the nobility of effort, he gives us an ideal to pursue and shows
us the means of pursuing it. Out of the fulness of a large experience,
unique in the history of literature, he unfolds the scheme of a
practicable perfection, and enforces the lessons he has learned from the
steady, passionless, and undaunted observation of human affairs.

To Goethe these sayings were merely _reflections_ or _opinions_; it is
his literary executors and his editors who called them by more ambitious
titles, so as to challenge a comparison with certain other famous books
of wise thought. They are the reflections of a long life rich in all the
intellectual treasures of the world, in its versatility amazing, in its
insight well-nigh fathomless; a life that, in his own words, approached
the infinite by following the finite on every side. Such a man need only
speak to utter something important; and we on our part need only
rem