The typical history of growth in a human spirit,--"Wilhelm Meister" is that. Can you conceive of a theme more enticing? And this, too, treated by one of the master minds of the world. Why do not we shut up our shops, and leave the streets deserted, till the import of this has been exhausted? Who can _afford_ to pass it by? Precious, indeed, must be his time, who for this has none! The history, I said, is typical. Botanists picture for us a plant which represents the _idea_ of all vegetable form. Goethe, who led botanists to this central treatment, here takes up growth in a human soul, and proceeds with it in a similar way. He recognizes those spiritual forces which, obscurely or visibly, work in all; he recognizes equally the conditions, inward and outward, under which growth takes place; he depicts these in their advent, their collisions, their interplay, their result. A spiritual physiology we may name it. He gives not merely the typical form, but also the working processes, and the _type_ of these. Nor does he merely enumerate and describe these, after the manner of science, but pictures them in their total action and final unity. Of such a work, wrought out with so much of penetration and power, one can speak coolly enough only by effort. But the whole is not yet said. Not only does he delineate the idea of growth in man, but he assumes this as the central use and meaning of the world. "Positive philosophy" will groan. Give it the smelling-bottle, and leave it. Goethe does not deign it even a denial; without pausing to say, he sovereignly assumes, that Nature, as her supreme function, is the school-mistress of man. For the results enshrined in his spirit, suns shine, worlds wheel, and systems "move in mystic dance, not without song." Through the long toil out of chaos to orderly completion and green fertility, Nature bore in her heart one constant, inspiring hope,--at last to educate a man. To this end are all times and seasons; to this end are government, property, labor, rest, pain, and peace; the world of things and the world of events alike draw meekly near to the crescent soul, and tender to it their total result, saying,--"In thee, only in thee, do we come at length to use."