283 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 



XII. 



Man. 



When Goethe declares, "We are eternally In contact 

 with problems. Man is an obscure being ; he knows 

 little of the world, and of himself least of all,"" — he 

 almost repeats what J. J. Rousseau says in Emile,^* 

 " We have no measure for this huge machine (the 

 world) ; we cannot calculate its relations ; we know 

 neither its primary laws nor its final cause ; we do not 

 know ourselves ; we know neither our nature nor our 

 active principle." 



Such and such-like quotations are wont to be made 

 to us as justifying and confirming assertions of the 

 narrowness of our powers of understanding, and of the 

 limits of science. But in Anthropology we cannot pos- 

 sibly attribute any greater authority to the worthy J. J. 

 Rousseau than to a Father of the Church ; and to the 

 Goethe, whose casual utterances are transmitted to pos- 

 terity by Eckermann, we oppose the other Goethe, who 

 in the fulness of youthful vigour, exclaims — 



Joy, supreme Creation of Nature, feeling the power 



All sublimest thoughts, which lifted her as she made thee, 



In thyself to re-echo * 



and who conceives the most beautiful organization, as he 



* Freue dich, hochstes Geschopf der Natur, du f iihlest dich fiihig 

 Ihr den hochstcn Gedanken, zu dem sie schaffend sich aufschwang, 

 Nachzudenken *> 



