This doctrine again, is not in itself or necessarily a doctrine of selfishness, though it may easily be represented so. It may be true that all virtue requires self-denial; but for that very reason we may easily conceive a system of senseless and aimless self-denial setting itself up in the place of virtue. It is not every kind of self-denial that Goethe has in view, but the particular kind by which he has found himself hampered. His indignation is not moved when he sees absistence practised in order to attain some great end; it is the abstinence which leads to nothing and aims at nothing that provokes him. He has given two striking dramatic pictures of it. There is Faust, who cannot tolerate the emptiness of his secluded life; but does it appear that he rebels against it simply because it brings no pleasure to himself, even though it confers benefit upon others and upon the world? The burden of his complaint is that his abstinence does no good to anybody, that the studies for which he foregoes pleasure lead to no real knowledge; and expressly to make this clear, Goethe introduces the story of the plague, which Faust and his father had tried to cure by a drug, which did infinitely more harm than the plague itself. The other picture is that of Brother Martin in “Götz,” the young monk who envies Götz his life so full of movement and emotion, while he is himself miserable under the restraint of his vows. Here, again, the complaint is that no good comes of such abstinence. The life of self-denial is conceived as an utter stagnation, unhealthy even from a moral point of view. It is contrasted with a life not of luxury, but of strenuous energy, at once wholesome and useful to the world.