Such being the variety of works in which he has recorded his speculations on man, his powers, his actions, and his productions, it will be naturally asked, what were the main features of his philosophy, and to what results did they lead on those great points which unhappily disunite mankind, religion and politics? Hume has well designated the great varieties of intellect and moral character by the significant scholastic names of the Platonist, the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Sceptic. According to this classification, it may be said that Goethe was too devotedly attached to the study of nature and actual life to be a Platonist; he loved contemplation too intensely, and was too indolent and self-indulgent to be a stoic; he was too intellectual to be a gross sensualist, or, in the worst sense, an Epicurean; and he had too much imagination to be able to tolerate the modern rational philosophy, a mere system of negatives. In so far, therefore, he was an enemy of vulgar scepticism; yet, blended with the refinement which the poetic mind presupposes, he had a large portion of scepticism and Epicureanism in his nature. Towards the positive religion which he found established in his own country he manifested respect, though he never made any distinct profession of faith upon doctrinal matters; he conformed however to the Lutheran church. On two occasions only do we recollect the expression of any strong feeling as to religion. He early betrayed great contempt towards the German Rationalists, whom he rather despised for their shallowness than reproached with being mischievous. His love of Rome by no means reconciled him to the Church of Rome, against which he would inveigh with a warmth unusual in him. He maintained that Catholic superstition had deeply injured the poetic character of Calderon, and considered the Protestantism of Shakspeare as a happy accident in the life of that incomparable man. It appears from his memoirs, that Judaism and Christianity had occupied his mind very seriously from his childhood. He delighted in portraying the Christian enthusiast in a tone of kindred enthusiasm, as in his ‘Confessions of a Beautiful Soul,’ of which the original was a Moravian lady, his friend; and it was only in incidental bursts of sarcasm, especially in his gayer poems, that he alarmed the timid and the scrupulous. In spite of occasional ebullitions of spleen or rash speculation, he was habitually hostile towards the French anti-religious party. He makes his devil in Faustus describe himself as the “spirit that always denies,” in the same way that Alfieri scornfully terms Voltaire “Disinventor ed Inventor di nulla.” It was this negative, this merely destructive character, to which Goethe was in all things most resolutely opposed.