Goethe, on the morn of the nineteenth century, paints a new Sixtine Chapel in his poetry. But he no longer depicts the old ideas. He speaks of God-Nature. To him God is the eternal force of the All. His thoughts turn no longer on Creation and the Last Judgment. An eternal evolution is the source of his inspiration. He regards the whole universe as a single, immeasurable revelation of spirit. But this spirit is the rhythmic outflow of infinite developments. It becomes Milky Way and sun and planet, blue lotus-flowers and gay butterfly. At last it takes the form of man, and reads the stars as an open book. In Homer and Goethe it directs the style and the pen; in Michael Angelo and Raphael it guides the pencil and the brush. All this unfolds in Goethe, as in a vision with yet half-opened eyes. Then the nineteenth century begins. Nature is its salvation, the salvation of its most practical, most real need. It must struggle for its existence, like any other century, but it has new and improved weapons for the struggle. All the earlier ages were but poor blunderers. The lightning flashed on the naked savage, and he fell on his knees and prayed, powerless as he was. In the eighteenth century it dawned on men’s minds that this might be some force of nature. The nineteenth century sets its foot on the neck of the demon of this force, presses him into its service, plays with him. Its thoughts and words flash along the lightning current, as if along new nerve-tracks, that begin to circle the globe. Man becomes lord of the earth, from the uppermost azure down into the dark, cold abysses of the ocean, from the icy pole to the burning tropical desert. And at length man turns his thoughts upon himself. Man, his arm resting on the splendid instruments of modern research, raises his hand to his brow, and turns philosopher. He becomes at once more bold and more modest than ever.