It is scarcely an exaggeration to call this romance the prototype of a whole new species of fiction, namely that which occupies itself with psychical analysis. It is its treatment of love that is new. Far behind us now lies the time when Amor was represented as the charming child we all know from Thorwaldsen's bas-reliefs. To Voltaire Amor was the god of pleasure. "Les ris, les jeux et les plaisirs" were his attendants. To Rousseau he is the god of passion. With Goethe he has ceased to be a beneficent spirit; we understand when we read Goethe what Schopenhauer meant when he wrote that Amor pursues his way, indifferent to the misery of the individual. In Faust, the first poem of the new era, he is transformed from a roguish boy into a criminal. Faust seduces Gretchen and deserts her; Gretchen's love-story means the death of her mother, her brother, her infant, and herself. She, the innocent, loving girl, kills her mother with the sleeping-draught she administers in order that Faust may visit her by night; Faust and Mephistopheles together slay the brother who attempts to avenge his sister's disgrace; from fear of shame Gretchen kills her new-born child, for which she is thrown into prison and finally executed. Goethe's passion for truth impelled him to paint a very different picture of Amor from that which represents him as the rose-crowned boy. And in Goethe it is not only in its consequences but in its very nature that love is fraught with fate. In _Elective Affinities_ he has made a study of the mysterious and irresistible attraction and repulsion by which the mutual relations of souls are determined, as if they were chemical substances. The book is a kind of study of passion from the point of view of natural philosophy; Goethe shows us its rise, its magic power as a mysterious natural force, its foundation in the unfathomed depths of our soul.