The term "culture" received its present meaning in the latter half of the eighteenth century; culture itself reaches back to the beginning of the Modern Age. The whole evolution of the Modern Age is a striving beyond the religious form of life which prevailed in the Middle Ages, and which began to be felt to be narrow and one-sided. In opposition to this type of life a new type arose, increased in strength, and finally we became fully conscious of it in the idea of culture. The new type has been felt to be far superior to the old in many ways; it is not limited to one side of human nature, but desires to take it, and to develop it as a whole; it does not refer man to any kind of external aid, but makes his life depend as much as possible upon his own power, and finds an aim fully sufficient in the limitless extension of this power; it directs man's perception and endeavour not so much beyond the world as to it, and hopes by this means to give a stability to his striving, and a close relation with the abundance of things. The movement has brought about a far-reaching transformation of life: that which was lying dormant has been aroused; the rigid made plastic; the manifold woven into a whole of life; the whole range of life has acquired more spontaneous freshness and inner movement. The result of the work of history now becomes for the first time a complete possession, since above everything contingent and accidental it elevates an essential, and above everything tending to separation and hostility, a common humanity. The animating and ennobling influence of modern culture is nowhere more manifest than in the life-work of Goethe. For we recognise the greatness of his nature primarily in that, with the acutest vision and the greatest freedom, he entered into the multiplicity of experience and events; with placid yet powerful dominance stripped off all that was mere semblance and pretence, all that was simply conventional and partial, and fully realised the genuine, the freshness of life, and the purely human. (_V._ "The Problem of Human Life.") His treatment of Biblical narratives is a good example of this: that a king reigned in Egypt who knew not Joseph suggests to him how quickly even the most magnificent human achievements are forgotten; that Saul went forth to find his father's she-asses, and found a kingdom, symbolises to him the truth that we men often reach something totally different from, and also much better than, that for which we strove and hoped; the miracle of the walking on the water is to him a parable of unflinching faith--the holding fast to apparent impossibilities--without which there can be no great creation.