There is a better side to Goethe, which must not be overlooked. He was magnanimous, open-minded, and a friend to all men of genius. He met the poet Schiller, ten years younger than himself, ill in health and struggling with cruel poverty. Schiller was a poet of freedom, and stayed that to the end of his life. His first successful drama was “The Robbers,” a glorification of revolt against medieval tyranny; his last was “William Tell,” whose hero set Switzerland free from the Austrian yoke. The fact that Schiller was of humble origin made no difference to Goethe; he brought the young poet to Weimar, and got him a pension from the duke, and became his intimate friend. And that was the best thing that happened in Goethe’s life, for Schiller with his fine sincerity and idealism drove the older man to work. We are accustomed to see these two great names coupled together, and the critics point out that Schiller was the enthusiast, the “propagandist,” while Goethe, the serene Olympian temperament, was the greater poet. The critics do not mention that Schiller had to waste most of his life doing wretched hack work, and died of tuberculosis at the age of forty-six. If Goethe, with all his leisure and independence, had died at that age, his greatest work would have been lost. Can anyone deny that we get a world view from the writings of Goethe; that he has definite conclusions as to every aspect of human life? Can anyone deny that his dramas and his novels, even his lyric poems, are saturated with philosophy? It so happens that his point of view is that which has been accepted by tradition and critical authority through all the ages; therefore it slides down easily, it does not taste like medicine, and we do not think of it as propaganda. What is this point of view? The world is a place of blind and generally aimless strife, and scholars and men of genius are powerless to control it, and can only keep out of its way. “Renounce,” said Goethe; and what is the first of all things you must renounce? Manifestly, the dream that you can manage your own time. Live simply, develop your highest faculties, leave a message and an example to the world; and somehow, at some future date--you do not attempt to say when or how--this message and this example may take effect, and truth and justice and mercy may prevail. Meantime, since you must live, and since the ruling classes own all the means of life, you must be polite to them, you must fit yourself into their ways, you must be a gentleman, a courtier, a man of property.