Goethe began nothing if the whole of the work did not hover before his mind. By this determinateness of plan he preserved a most persevering attachment to the materials of which he had once laid hold; they were elements of his existence, which for him were immortal, because they constituted his inmost being. He could put off their execution for years, and still be certain that his love for them would return, that his interest in them would animate him anew. Through this depth of conception he preserved fresh to the end his original purpose; he needed not to fear that the fire of the first enthusiasm would go out; at the most different times he could take up his work again with youthful zeal and strength. Thus in the circle of his poetical labors, two conceptions that are in internal opposition to one another, accompanied him through his whole life. The one portrays a talented but fickle man, who, in want of culture, attaches himself to this person, then to that one, in order to become spiritually independent. This struggle carries him into the breadth of life, into manifold relations whose spirit he longs to seize and appropriate; such is Wilhelm Meister. The other is the picture of an absolutely independent personality that has cultivated its lordly power in solitary loftiness, and aspires boldly to subject the world to itself; such is Faust. In the development of both subjects there is a decisive turning-point which is marked in the first by the “Travels;” in the second, by the Second Part of the Tragedy. Up to this point, both in Wilhelm Meister and in Faust, subjective conditions prevail, which gradually purify themselves to higher views and aims. For the one, the betrothal with Natalia closes the world of wild, youthful desire; for the other, the death of Margaret has the same effect. The one steps into civil society and its manifold activity, with the earnest endeavor to comprehend all its elements, to acquire, preserve, and beautify property, and to assist in illuminating and ennobling social relations; the other takes likewise a practical turn, but from the summit of Society, from the stand-point of the State itself. If, therefore, in the apprenticeship and First Part of the Tragedy, on account of the excess of subjective conditions, a closer connection of the character and a passionate pathos are necessary, there appears, on the contrary, in the Travels and Second part of the Tragedy a thoughtfulness which moderates everything—a cool designingness; the particular elements are sharply characterized, but the personages seem rather as supporters of universal aims, in the accomplishment of which their own personality is submerged; the Universal and its language is their pathos, and the interest in their history, that before was so remarkably fascinating, is blunted of its keenness.