culture,
he took the French Revolution for a disturbance, an interruption, and
not a development in the progress of the world's history; and for all
its horrors and the pernicious demoralisation of its leaders, he had the
profoundest aversion. But afterwards he came to see that it had
beneficial results; that a revolution is ultimately never the fault of
the people, but of the injustice and incapacity of the government; and
that where there is a real necessity for a great reform, the old leaven
must be rooted out.[3] But he knew the danger of such a process, and he
indicates it here in an admirable saying: "Before the French Revolution
it was all _effort_; afterwards it all changed to _demand_"; and this
may be supplemented by his opinion on the nature of revolutionary
sentiments: "Men think they would be well-off if they were not ruled,
and fail to perceive that they can rule neither themselves nor others."
And if he, had thus no theoretical sympathy with democratic movements,
he had little feeling for that other great political tendency of our
time--nationality; convinced as he was that interest in the weal and woe
of another people is always a mark of the highest culture. But apart
from politics there is one characteristic of our own time in which he
fully and especially shares, if only for the reason that he did much
himself to produce it; and herein he has influenced us profoundly and is
influencing us still. The nineteenth century has this advantage over
every preceding age, that in it for the first time honest doubt, instead
of distinguishing a few, has become a common virtue. Goethe is one of
the surest and safest of those who have led the transition. "We praise
the eighteenth century," he writes, "for concerning itself chiefly with
analysis. The task remaining to the nineteenth is to discover the false
syntheses which prevail, and to analyse their contents anew." Of the aim
of analysis and the proper course of inquiry, no one has given a better
account than Goethe in what he says, in the words I have quoted, about
active scepticism; and in the sphere of morals and religion it will
perhaps be found hereafter that he has contributed, in some degree at
least, to the attainment of that "conditioned certainty," for which, as
we hope, all our efforts are made.

In the maxims on Literature there is some excellent criticism on
literary methods, and much that may well be taken to heart by certain
writers of our own day