It struggles with those forms till its secret is
won from each, and then lets each fall back into its place; in the
supreme, artistic view of life. With a kind of passionate coldness, such
natures rejoice to be away from and past their former selves. Above all,
they are jealous of that abandonment to one special gift which really
limits their capabilities. It would have been easy for Goethe, with the
gift of a sensuous nature, to let it overgrow him. It comes easily and
naturally, perhaps, to certain "other-worldly" natures to be even as the
Schoene Seele, that ideal of gentle pietism, in Wilhelm Meister: but to
the large vision of Goethe, that seemed to be a phase of life that a man
might feel all round, and leave behind him. Again, it is easy to indulge
the commonplace metaphysical instinct. But a taste for metaphysics may be
one of those things which we must renounce, if we mean to mould our lives
to artistic perfection. Philosophy serves culture, not by the fancied
gift of absolute or transcendental knowledge, but by suggesting questions
which help one to detect the passion, and strangeness, and dramatic
contrasts of life.
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