The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 02

Such a nature could comfortably withdraw into itself; vet even here we discover in him the ancient characteristic of always being occupied with himself, but without really observing himself. He thinks only of himself, not about himself; his mind is occupied with what he has before him; he is interested in his whole being, in its entire compass, and he cherishes the belief that his friends are likewise interested therein. We, therefore, find everything mentioned in his letters, from the highest moral to the most common physical need; indeed he directly states that he preferred to be entertained with personal trifles rather than with important affairs. At the same time he remains a complete riddle to himself, and even expresses astonishment over his own being, especially in consideration of what he was and what he had become. But every man may thus be regarded as a charade of many syllables, of which he himself can spell only a few, while others easily decipher the whole word.

Nor do we find in him any pronounced principles. His unerring feeling and cultured mind served him as a guide in morals as well as in aesthetics. His ideal was a kind of natural religion, in which God appears as the ultimate source of the beautiful and hardly as a being having any other relation to man. His conduct was most beautiful in all cases involving duty and gratitude.

His provision for himself was moderate, and not the same at all times. He always labored most diligently to secure a competence for his old age. His means are noble; in his efforts to attain every end he shows himself honest, straightforward, even defiant, and at the same time clever and persevering. He never works after a fixed plan, but always instinctively and passionately. His pleasure in every discovery is intense, for which reason errors are unavoidable, which, however, in his rapid progress are corrected as quickly as he sees them. Here also he always maintains an antique principle; the certainty of the point of departure, the uncertainty of the aim to be reached, as well as the incomplete and imperfect character of the treatment as soon as it becomes extensive.

SOCIETY

Little prepared by his early mode of life, Winckelmann did not at first feel at ease in company, but a feeling of dignity soon took the place of education and custom, and he learned very rapidly to conduct himself in accordance with his surroundings. The gratification felt in association with distinguished, wealthy and celebrated people and the pleasure of being esteemed by them everywhere appears. As regards facility of intercourse, he could not have found himself in a better place than Rome.

He himself observes, that however ceremonious the Roman grandees, especially the clerical, appeared in public, at home they were pleasant and intimate with the members of their household; but he did not observe that this intimacy concealed the oriental relation of lord and servant. All southern nations would find it intolerably tiresome to have to maintain the constant mutual tension in association with their dependents which the northerners are accustomed to.

Travelers have observed that the slaves in Turkey behave toward their masters with more ease than northern courtiers toward their princes, or dependents with us toward their superiors. Yet, examined closely, these marks of consideration have been really introduced for the benefit of the dependents, who by these means always remind their superior what is due them.

The southerner, however, craves for hours in which to take his ease, and this accrues to the advantage of his household. Such scenes are described by Winckelmann with great relish; they lighten whatever dependence he may feel, and nourish his sense of freedom which was averse to every fetter that might restrain him.

STRANGERS

Although Winckelmann was very happy in his association with the natives, he suffered all the more annoyance and tribulation from strangers. It is true that nothing can be more exasperating than the usual stranger in Rome. In every other place the traveler can better look out for himself and find something suitable to his needs; but whoever does not accommodate himself to Rome is an abomination to the man of real Roman sentiment.

The English are reproached because they take their tea-kettles everywhere along with them, even dragging them to the summit of Mt. Ætna. But has not every nation its own tea-kettle, in which its citizens on their travels brew a bundle of dried herbs brought along from home?

Such hurrying and arrogant strangers, never looking about them, and judging everything in accordance with their own narrow limitations, were denounced by Winckelmann more than once; he vows never to show them about, and yet finally allows himself to be persuaded to do it. He jests over his inclination to play the schoolmaster, to teach and to convince, and indeed many advantages accrued to him through the association with persons important by reason of their rank and services. We mention only the Prince of Dessan, the Crown Prince of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Brunswick, and Baron von Riedesel, a man who showed himself quite worthy of our friend in his attitude toward art and antiquity.

THE WORLD

Winckelmann constantly sought after esteem and consideration; but he wished to achieve them through real merit. He always insists upon thoroughness of subject, of means, and of treatment, and is therefore very hostile toward French superficiality.

He found in Rome opportunities to associate with strangers of all nations, and maintained such connections in a clever, effective manner. He was pleased with, indeed he sought after, honorary degrees of academies and learned societies.

But he achieved greatest prominence by that great document of his merits, over which he silently labored with great diligence—I refer to his History of Ancient Art. It was immediately translated into the French language, and made him known far and wide.

The real value of such a work is perhaps best appreciated immediately after its publication: its efficiency is recognized, the new matter is quickly adopted. The contemporaries are astonished at the sudden assistance they obtained, while a colder posterity nibbles disgustedly at the works of its masters and teachers, and makes demands which would never have occurred to it, if the very men criticised had not accomplished so much.

And so Winckelmann was recognized by the cultured nations of Europe at a time when he was sufficiently established at Rome to be honored with the important position of Director of Antiquities.

RESTLESSNESS

Notwithstanding his recognized and often vaunted happiness, Winckelmann was always tortured by a restlessness which, as its foundations lay deep in his nature, assumed various forms.

During the times of his early poverty and his later dependence upon the bounty of a court and the favor of many a wellwisher, he always limited himself to the smallest needs, that he might not become dependent or at least not more dependent than absolutely necessary. In the meantime he was always strenuously occupied in gaining by his own exertions a livelihood for the present and for the future, for which at length the successful illustrated edition of his Monumenti Inediti offered the fairest hope.

But these uncertain conditions accustomed him to look for his subsistence now here, then there; now to accept a position with small advantage to himself—in the house of a cardinal, in the Vatican or elsewhere; then, when he saw some other prospect, magnanimously to give up his place, while looking about for something else and lending an ear to many a proposition.

Further, one who lives in Rome is constantly exposed to the passion for traveling to all parts of the world. He finds himself in the centre of the ancient world, and the lands most interesting to the investigator of antiquity lie close about him. Magna Græcia, Sicily, Dalmatia, the Peloponnesus, Ionia, and Egypt—all of them are, so to say, offered to the inhabitants of Rome, and awaken an inexpressible longing in one who, like Winckelmann, was born with the desire to see. This is increased by the great number of strangers on their passage through Rome making sensible or useless preparations to travel in these lands, and who on their return never tire of describing distant wonders and exhibiting specimens of them.

And so Winckelmann planned to travel everywhere, partly on his own responsibility, partly in company with such wealthy travelers as would recognize the value of a scholarly and talented comrade.

Another cause of this inner restlessness and discomfort does honor to his heart—the irresistible longing for absent friends. Upon this the ardent desire of a man that otherwise lived so much in the present seems to have been peculiarly concentrated; he sees his friends before him, he converses with them through letters, he longs for their embraces, and wishes to repeat the days formerly lived together.

These wishes, especially directed toward his friends in the North, were awakened anew by the Peace of Hubertusbury (Feb., 1763). It would have been his pride to present himself before the great king who had already honored him with an offer to enter his service; to see again the Prince of Dessau, whose exalted, reposeful nature he regarded as a gift of God to the earth; to pay his respects to the Duke of Brunswick, whose great capacities he well knew how to prize; to praise in person Minister of State von Münchausen, who had done so much for science, and to admire his immortal foundation at Göttingen; to rejoice again in the lively and intimate intercourse with his Swiss friends—such allurements filled his heart and his imagination; with such images was his mind so long occupied that he unfortunately followed this impulse and so went to his death.

He was devoted body and soul to his Italian lot to such an extent that every other one seemed insufferable to him. On his former journey, the cliffs and mountains of Tyrol had interested, yea, delighted him, and now, on his return to the fatherland, he felt terrified, as if he were being dragged through the Cimmerian portal and convinced of the impossibility of continuing his journey.

DEPARTURE

And thus upon the highest pinnacle of happiness that he could himself have wished for, he departed this earth. His fatherland awaited him, his friends stretched their arms toward him; all the expressions of love which he so deeply needed, all testimonials of public honor, which he valued so highly, awaited his appearance, to be heaped upon him. And in this sense we may count him happy, that from the summit of human existence he ascended to the blessed, that a momentary shock, a sudden, quick pain removed him from the living. The infirmities of old age, the diminution of mental power, he did not experience; the dispersal of the treasures of art, which he had foretold, although in another sense, did not occur before his eyes. He lived as a man and departed hence as a complete man. Now he enjoys in the memory of posterity the advantage of appearing only as one eternally vigorous and powerful; for in the image in which a man leaves the earth he wanders among the shadows, and so Achilles remains for us an ever-striving youth. That Winckelmann departed so early, works also to our advantage. From his grave the breath of his power strengthens us, and awakens in us the intense desire always to continue with zeal and love the work that he has begun.

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE5

TRANSLATED BY BAILEY SAUNDERS

There is nothing worth thinking but it has been thought before; we must only try to think it again.

How can a man come to know himself? Never by thinking, but by doing. Try to do your duty, and you will know at once what you are worth. But what is your duty? The claims of the day.

The longer I live, the more it grieves me to see man, who occupies his supreme place for the very purpose of imposing his will upon nature, and freeing himself and his from an outrageous necessity—to see him taken up with some false notion, and doing just the opposite of what he wants to do; and then, because the whole bent of his mind is spoilt, bungling miserably over everything.

In the works of mankind, as in those of nature, it is really the motive which is chiefly worth attention.

In Botany there is a species of plants called Incompletæ; and just in the same way it can be said there are men who are incomplete and imperfect. They are those whose desires and struggles are out of proportion to their actions and achievements.

It is a great error to take oneself for more than one is, or for less than one is worth.

From time to time I meet with a youth in whom I can wish for no alteration or improvement, only I am sorry to see how often his nature makes him quite ready to swim with the stream of the time; and it is on this that I would always insist, that man in his fragile boat has the rudder placed in his hand, just that he may not be at the mercy of the waves, but follow the direction of his own insight.

If I am to listen to another man's opinion, it must be expressed positively. Of things problematical I have enough in myself.

Piety is not an end, but a means: a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest tranquility of soul. Hence it may be observed that those who set up piety as an end and object are mostly hypocrites.

Reading ought to mean understanding; writing ought to mean knowing something; believing ought to mean comprehending; when you desire a thing, you will have to take it; when you demand it, you will not get it; and when you are experienced, you ought to be useful to others.

The stream is friendly to the miller whom it serves; it likes to pour over the mill wheels; what is the good of it stealing through the valley in apathy?

Theory is in itself of no use, except in so far as it makes us believe in the connection of phenomena.

"Le sens common est le génie de l'humanité." Common-sense, which is here put forward as the genius of humanity, must be examined first of all in the way it shows itself. If we inquire the purpose to which humanity puts it, we find as follows: Humanity is conditioned by needs. If they are not satisfied, men become impatient; and if they are, it seems not to affect them. The normal man moves between these two states, and he applies his understanding—his so-called common sense—to the satisfaction of his needs. When his needs are satisfied, his task is to fill up the waste spaces of indifference. Here, too, he is successful, if his needs are confined to what is nearest and most necessary. But if they rise and pass beyond the sphere of ordinary wants, common-sense is no longer sufficient; it is a genius no more, and humanity enters on the region of error.

There is no piece of foolishness but it can be corrected by intelligence or accident; no piece of wisdom but it can miscarry by lack of intelligence or by accident.

Justice insists on obligation, law on decorum. Justice weighs and decides, law superintends and orders. Justice refers to the individual, law to society.

The history of knowledge is a great fugue in which the voices of the nations one after the other emerge.

If a man is to achieve all that is asked of him, he must take himself for more than he is, and as long as he does not carry it to an absurd length, we willingly put up with it.

People whip curds to see if they cannot make cream of them.

Wisdom lies only in truth.

When I err, every one can see it; but not when I lie.

Before the storm breaks, the dust rises violently for the last time—the dust that is soon to be laid for ever.

Men do not come to know one another easily, even with the best will and the best purpose. And then ill-will comes in and distorts everything.

In the world the point is, not to know men, but at any given moment to be cleverer than the man who stands before you. You can prove this at every fair and from every charlatan.

Not everywhere where there is water, are there frogs; but where you have frogs, there you will find water.

In the formation of species Nature gets, as it were, into a cul-de-sac; she cannot make her way through, and is disinclined to turn back. Hence the stubbornness of national character.

Many a man knocks about on the wall with his hammer, and believes that he hits the right nail on the head every time.

Those who oppose intellectual truths do but stir up the fire, and the cinders fly about and burn what they had else not touched.

Those from whom we are always learning are rightly called our masters; but not every one who teaches us deserves this title.

It is with you as with the sea: the most varied names are given to what is in the end only salt water.

It is said that vain self-praise stinks in the nostrils. That may be so; but for the kind of smell which comes from unjust blame by others the public has no nose at all.

There are problematical natures which are equal to no position in which they find themselves, and which no position satisfies. This it is that causes that hideous conflict which wastes life and deprives it of all pleasure.

Dirt glitters as long as the sun shines.

He is the happiest man who can set the end of his life in connection with the beginning.

A state of things in which every day brings some new trouble is not the right one.

The Hindoos of the Desert make a solemn vow to eat no fish.

To venture an opinion is like moving a piece at chess it may be taken, but it forms the beginning of a game that is won.

Truth belongs to the man, error to his age. This is why it has been said that, while the misfortune of the age caused his error, the force of his soul made him emerge from the error with glory.

I pity those who make much ado about the transitory nature of all things and are lost in the contemplation of earthly vanity: are we not here to make the transitory permanent? This we can do only if we know how to value both.

A rainbow which lasts a quarter of an hour is looked at no more.

Faith is private capital, kept in one's own house. There are public savings-banks and loan-offices, which supply individuals in their day of need; but here the creditor quietly takes his interest for himself.

During a prolonged study of the lives of various men both great and small, I came upon this thought: In the web of the world the one may well be regarded as the warp, the other as the woof. It is the little men, after all, who give breadth to the web, and the great men firmness and solidity; perhaps, also, the addition of some sort of pattern. But the scissors of the Fates determine its length, and to that all the rest must join in submitting itself.

Truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is only with blinking eyes that we all of us try to get past it, in actual terror of being burnt.

The really foolish thing in men who are otherwise intelligent is that they fail to understand what another person says, when he does not exactly hit upon the right way of saying it.

One need only grow old to become gentler in one's judgments. I see no fault committed which I could not have committed myself.

Why should those who are happy expect one who is miserable to die before them in a graceful attitude, like the gladiator before the Roman mob?

By force of habit we look at a clock that has run down as if it were still going, and we gaze at the face of a beauty as though she still loved.

Dilettantism treated seriously, and knowledge pursued mechanically, end by becoming pedantry.

No one but the master can promote the cause of Art. Patrons help the master—that is right and proper; but that does not always mean that Art is helped.

The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that they forfeit their originality in recognizing a truth which has already been recognized by others.

It is much easier to recognize error than to find truth; for error lies on the surface and may be overcome; but truth lies in the depths, and to search for it is not given to every one.

No one should desire to live in irregular circumstances; but if by chance a man falls into them, they test his character and show of how much determination he is capable.

An honorable man with limited ideas often sees through the rascality of the most cunning jobber.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then criticism will gradually yield to him.

The masses cannot dispense with men of ability, and such men are always a burden to them.

If you lay duties upon people and give them no rights, you must pay them well.

I can promise to be sincere, but not to be impartial.

Word and picture are correlatives which are continually in quest of each other, as is sufficiently evident in the case of metaphors and similes. So from all time what was said or sung inwardly to the ear had to be presented equally to the eye. And so in childish days we see word and picture in continual balance; in the book of the law and in the way of salvation, in the Bible and in the spelling-book. When something was spoken which could not be pictured, and something pictured which could not be spoken, all went well; but mistakes were often made, and a word was used instead of a picture; and thence arose those monsters of symbolical mysticism, which are doubly an evil.

The importunity of young dilettanti must be borne with good-will; for as they grow old they become the truest worshippers of Art and the Master.

People have to become really bad before they care for nothing but mischief, and delight in it.

Clever people are the best encyclopædia.

There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do anything worth doing.

A man cannot live for every one; least of all for those with whom he would not care to live.

I should like to be honest with you, without our falling out; but it will not do. You act wrongly, and fall between two stools; you win no adherents and lose your friends. What is to be the end of it?

If a clever man commits a folly, it is not a small one.

I went on troubling myself about general ideas until I learnt to understand the particular achievements of the best men.

The errors of a man are what make him really lovable.

As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more potent, in which most men live.

Mankind is like the Red Sea; the staff has scarcely parted the waves asunder before they flow together again. Thoughts come back; beliefs persist; facts pass by never to return.

Of all peoples, the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life the best.

We readily bow to antiquity, but not to posterity. It is only a father that does not grudge talent to his son. The whole art of living consists in giving up existence in order to exist.

All our pursuits and actions are a wearying process. Well is it for him who wearies not.

Hope is the second soul of the unhappy.

At all times it has not been the age, but individuals alone, who have worked for knowledge. It was the age which put Socrates to death by poison, the age which burnt Huss. The ages have always remained alike.

If a man knows where to get good advice, it is as though he could supply it himself.

A man must pay dear for his errors if he wishes to get rid of them, and even then he is lucky.

Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long as we are not carried away by it.

Error is related to truth as sleep to waking. I have observed that on awakening from error a man turns again to truth as with new vigor.

Every one suffers who does not work for himself. A man works for others to have them share in his joy.

Common-sense is born pure in the healthy man, is self-developed, and is revealed by a resolute perception and recognition of what is necessary and useful. Practical men and women avail themselves of it with confidence. Where it is absent, both sexes find anything necessary when they desire it, and useful when it gives them pleasure.

All men, as they attain freedom, give play to their errors. The strong do too much, and the weak too little.

The conflict of the old, the existing, the continuing, with development, improvement and reform, is always the same. Order of every kind turns at last to pedantry, and to get rid of the one, people destroy the other; and so it goes on for a while, until people perceive that order must be established anew. Classicism and Romanticism; close corporations and freedom of trade; the maintenance of large estates and the division of the land—it is always the same conflict which ends by producing a new one. The best policy of those in power would be so to moderate this conflict as to let it right itself without the destruction of either element. But this has not been granted to men, and it seems not to be the will of God.