His heart is still full of warmth,
though his head is clear and cold; the world for him is still full of
grandeur, though he clothes it with no false colours; his
fellow-creatures are still objects of reverence and love, though their
basenesses are plainer to no eye than to his. To reconcile these
contradictions is the task of all good men, each for himself, in his
own way and manner; a task which, in our age, is encompassed with
difficulties peculiar to the time; and which Goethe seems to have
accomplished with a success that few can rival. A mind so in unity
with itself, even though it were a poor and small one, would arrest
our attention, and win some kind regard from us; but when this mind
ranks among the strongest and most complicated of the species, it
becomes a sight full of interest, a study full of deep instruction.
Such a mind as Goethe's is the fruit not only of a royal endowment by
nature, but also of a culture proportionate to her bounty. In Goethe's
original form of spirit we discern the highest gifts of manhood, without
any deficiency of the lower: he has an eye and a heart equally for the
sublime, the common, and the ridiculous; the elements at once of a
poet, a thinker, and a wit.
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