possess
is the unity that is stamped upon them by the all-embracing personality
of their author, always and unweariedly striving to make his life
systematic, distinct, and fruitful; and to judge them as a whole, a man
must be able to fathom so great a genius. But to every one in every walk
of life Goethe has a word of wise counsel, as though he understood every
form of existence and could enter into its needs. In a fine passage in
the _Wanderjahre_, he likens the thought that thus in wondrous fashion
takes a thousand particular shapes, to a mass of quicksilver, which, as
it falls, separates into innumerable globules, spreading out on all
sides. And while these sayings may present thoughts in seeming
contradiction one with another, as the moment that called them forth
presented this or that side of experience, their inmost nature is a
common tendency to realise a great ideal of life. It is little they owe
to the form in which they are cast; they are not the elements of an
artistic whole which must be seized before we can understand the full
meaning of its parts. They are a miscellaneous record of the shrewdest
observation; and to read them as they should be read, a few at a time,
is like the opportunity of repeated converse with a man of extraordinary
gifts, great insight, and the widest culture, who touches profoundly and
suggestively now on this, now on that aspect of life and the world and
the progress of knowledge. It is the fruit of his own experience that
Goethe gives us; and we shall do well to think of it as he himself
thought of another book, and to bear in mind that "every word which we
take in a general sense and apply to ourselves, had, under certain
circumstances of time and place, a peculiar, special and directly
individual reference."

Goethe is no exception to the rest of mankind in not being equally wise
at all times, and in the maxims there are degrees of value: they do not
all shine with the like brilliance. Some of them are valuable only for
what they suggest; of some, again, it is easy to see that, they appear
as matters of speculation rather than as certainties. They raise
difficulties, ask for criticism, if possible, correction; or, it may be,
they call attention to the contrary view and invite a harmony of
opposites. Some of them make a great demand upon our ability "to
understand a proverb and the interpretation; the words of the wise and
their dark sayings." Their value sometimes depends on the