the powers
that be_' was bestowed upon me. That is, however, a very ambiguous
title, which I would beg to decline. If the 'powers that be' were all
that is excellent, good, and just, I should have no objection to the
title; but, since with much that is good there is also much that is bad,
unjust, and imperfect, a friend of the 'powers that be' means often
little less than the friend of the obsolete and bad.[12]

"But time is constantly progressing, and human affairs wear every fifty
years a different aspect; so that an arrangement which, in the year
1800, was perfection, may, perhaps, in the year 1850, be a defect.

"And, furthermore, nothing is good for a nation but that which arises
from its own core and its own general wants, without apish imitation of
another; since what to one race of people, of a certain age, is a
wholesome nutriment, may perhaps prove a poison for another. All
endeavors to introduce any foreign innovation, the necessity for which
is not rooted in the core of the nation itself, are therefore foolish;
and all premeditated revolutions of the kind are I unsuccessful, _for
they are without God, who keeps aloof from such bungling_. If, however,
there exists an actual necessity for a great reform amongst a people,
God is with it, and it prospers. He was visibly with Christ and his
first adherents; for the appearance of the new doctrine of love was a
necessity to the people. He was also visibly with Luther; for the
purification of the doctrine corrupted by the priests was no less a
necessity. Neither of the great powers whom I have named was, however, a
friend of the permanent; much more were both of them convinced that the
old leaven must be got rid of, and that it would be impossible to go on
and remain in the untrue, unjust, and defective way."

_Tuesday, January 27._--Goethe talked with me about the continuation of
his memoirs, with which he is now busy. He observed that this later
period of his life would not be narrated with such minuteness as the
youthful epoch of _Dichtung and Wahrheit_.[13] "I must," said he, "treat
this later period more in the fashion of annals: my outward actions must
appear rather than my inward life. Altogether, the most important part
of an individual's life is that of development, and mine is concluded in
the detailed volumes of _Dichtung and Wahrheit_. Afterwards begins the
conflict with the world, and that is interesting only in its results.

"And then the life of a