ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



To regard Nature, therefore, as the art of God, 

 is to see it complete in itself; all the disharmonies 

 vanish, all our perplexing problems are solved. 

 The earth and the heavens are not for our private 

 good alone, but for all other things. Opposites are 

 blended. Good and bad are relative; heaven and 

 hell are light and shade in the same picture. Our 

 happiness or our misery are secondary; they are the 

 pigments on the painter's palette. The beauty of 

 Nature is its harmony with our constitution; its 

 terror emphasizes our weakness. 



Where does the great artist get his laws of art but 

 from his insight into the spirit and method of Na- 

 ture? They are reflected in his own heart; the act of 

 creation repeats itself in his own handiwork. The 

 true artist has no secondary aims — not to teach or 

 to preach, nor to praise nor condemn; but to por- 

 tray, and to show us, through the particular, the 

 road to the universal. 



Eckermann reports Goethe as saying to him that 

 "Nature's intentions are always good"; but if 

 questioned, Goethe would hardly have maintained 

 that the clouds, the winds, the streams, the tides, 

 gravity, cohesion, and so on, have intentions of any 

 sort, much less intentions directed to us or away 

 from us. Even the wisest among us thus make man 

 the aim and object of Nature. We impose our own 

 psychology upon the very rock and trees. 



Goethe always read into Nature his own human 



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