o do." "Voluntary dependence is the best state, and
how should that be possible without love?" And just in the same sense
Goethe refuses to regard all self-denial as virtuous, but only the
self-denial that leads to some useful end. All other forms of it are
immoral, since they stunt and cramp the free development of what is best
in us--the desire, namely, to deal effectively with our present life,
and make the most and fairest of it.

And here it is that Goethe's moral code is fused with his religious
belief. "Piety," he says, "is not an end but a means: a means of
attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquillity of soul." This
is the piety he preaches; not the morbid introspection that leads to no
useful end, the state of brooding melancholy, the timorous
self-abasement, the anxious speculation as to some other condition of
being. And this tranquillity of soul, Goethe taught that it should be
ours, in spite of the thousand ills of life which give us pause in our
optimism. It is attained by the firm assurance that, somewhere and
somehow, a power exists that makes for moral good; that our moral
endeavours are met, so to speak, half-way by a moral order in the
universe, which comes to the aid of individual effort. And the sum and
substance of his teaching, whether in the maxims or in any other of his
mature productions, is that we must resign ourselves to this power, in
gratitude and reverence towards it and all its manifestations in
whatever is good and beautiful. This is Goethe's strong faith, his
perfect and serene trust. He finely shadows it forth in the closing
words of _Pandora_, where Eos proclaims that the work of the gods is to
lead our efforts to the eternal good, and that we must give them free
play:--

Was zu wuenschen ist, ihr unten fuehlt es;
Was zu geben sei, die wissen's droben.
Gross beginnet ihr Titanen; aber leiten
Zu dem ewig Guten, ewig Schoenen,
Ist der Goetter Werk; die lasst gewaehren.

And so too in _Faust_: it is the long struggle to realise an Ideal,
dimly seen on life's labyrinthine way of error, that leads at last to
the perfect redemption:--

Wer immer strebend sich bemueht,
Den koennen wir erloesen.

And throughout the perplexities of life and the world, where all things
are but signs and tokens of some inner and hidden reality, it is the
ideal of love and service, _das Ewig-Weibliche_, that draws us on.

But this assurance cannot be reache