reference to the poet's later years. 'Die Natürliche Tochter,' the second part of 'Faust,' and portions of the Westöstlicher Divan' illustrate the victory of the symbolising over the spontaneous spirit. Even here many would hesitate to admit the last as legitimate evidence. For there are things in the Westöstlicher Divan' that stand comparison not only with, say, the 'Roman Elegies,' but even with the early outbursts, of which 'Mahomet's Gesang' is a leading instance. Accordingly, when one frankly admits that there is much in Goethe's later phase that gives countenance to the French or critical view, enough has been allowed. Undoubtedly the attitude characteristic of didactic prose, of Wilhelm Meister' and the Conversations with Eckermann,' is appropriate more to the philosopher than to the littérateur. But, apart altogether from a tendency to increased reflection, which even the greatest poets-Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Goethe, Browning evince in declining years; apart, too, from the questionable justice of holding this period representative, it may be shown that Scherer's contention rests ultimately upon a misconception of the relation in which Goethe stood to his materials.

"Goethe's Hellenism" is a phrase that covers more than appears on the surface. For many it indicates nothing but the poet's conscious antagonism to distinctive traits of the era in which he lived. While for others, a smaller class, of whom Scherer was one, it is an intimation that Goethe carefully tended his muse, so as to restore through her a species of artificial respiration to dead things. Both interpretations are unjust, though the latter is far the more insidious. Taking the poet's work as a whole, evading no responsibility by convenient

selection, "Hellenism" is a warrantable term only by virtue of an extension that entirely removes its sting as a criticism. It is applicable if it be held to cover, not simply a devotion to the special ideals of classic Greece, but also a living appreciation of poetic materials drawn from Rome and Mecca and the further East, as well as from the mysticism of Plato and Spinoza. Nay, more, it must be taken to include the reinterpretation of all in a Goethean manner-that is, with a freedom so transmuting content that no Greek or Roman, no Arabian prophet or Persian poet or semi-Jewish philosopher, would readily comprehend the result. Not Goethe's work, then, but the character and extent of what may be called his educational possessions, might engender the supposition that in him the deep thinker overcame the free artist. His culture and knowledge alone afford a wide enough basis for so large a conclusion. Their scope also tempts to the further deduction that the remnants culled from past ages remained ever foreign to the poet. This, on the contrary, is so far from the truth that he might well be taken as the most eminent example of the proverb, He touched nothing which he did not ornament. All that he gathers from Greek and Oriental civilisation he fuses again with modern ideas. His Prometheus would hardly impress Sophocles as heroic, the Greek would rather perceive a person of somewhat foolish impiety. The immanent principle in nature, apostrophised by Ganymed, had not been revealed to the Athenian citizen on this wise. No; Goethe, like the greater Shakespeare, so overcomes his material, irrespective of its sources, that a new creation springs forth. And this transmutation was the work of ideas peculiar to his age-of widespread

intuitions to which he first gave distinct speech. Although he deemed himself a pagan, and considered Christianity hardly the religion for him, he was not antagonistic to his epoch. By the simple fact that he could so detach himself from merely acquired knowledge as to reproduce its elements on an original plan, he articulated many fresh ideas drawn from the central life of the time whose representative he must ever remain. Little as he may have perceived it, his age flowed through him, and little as some of his critics appear to note, this passage itself destroyed at a stroke the seeming externality of the historic incidents and ideals from which he often set out. If such be the desire, much that men call spiritual information can be gleaned from his work. The first part of Faust' implies an entire philosophy, but so too does "Hamlet." And Goethe is no more to be blamed for this than Shakespeare. Both reveal what they have known in their own souls. No dispraise to them, then, that we find deep import in their words; admiration and wonderment rather that with such art so much matter should have been so perfectly allied. Unconsciously, and therefore artistically, Goethe passed Hellenism through the medium of mediæval mysticism, reducing the supernaturalism of the monk by the naturalism of the botanist, negating the saint's other-worldliness by the dramatist's supreme interest in man. But all this, and much else, found best accomplishment in what was artistically finest. Through poetry, more perhaps than through the sister arts, philosophy in this very way receives voice. After the worst has been said of him, Goethe, by keeping within the truly poetic sphere, proves that literature and philosophy must overlap.

The great drama achieves the highest level, because in the limited framework of an artistic whole it encloses the spiritual evolution of an age, perhaps of a civilisation, for which the philosopher must lay it to his account ere long to find meaning, if not to discover in it some evidence eminently relevant to the proof of his system.

BERKELEY, KANT, AND SCHOPENHAUER.

I. Introductory.

IN philosophy, as in other departments of human effort, history sometimes evinces a tendency to repeat itself. Not that the same principle or doctrine reappears marked through and through by identical qualities. Rather, analogies can be traced, and, if fairly interpreted, if coaxed and not forced, much may be learned by reading single notions or even entire systems of today in the light cast back by their cognate prede

cessors.

It can hardly be alleged, for example, that the mediæval controversy over "universals" has yet been laid for ever. The old argument still goes on. New illustrations, newer interests, accompany it, and perhaps tend to obscure its erstwhile meaning, or, at least, to differentiate it widely from the more technical problems to which William of Champaux, Roscellinus, and Abélard devoted their lives. Nevertheless, taken broadly, Realism and Nominalism have been fighting out the ancient battle over nearly the whole field of modern