freedom. 



22 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



through the help of art and beauty, out of the evils and 

 limitations of life into the sphere of the Ideal. What 

 Schiller proclaimed Goethe actually carried out. Through 

 his long life he strove to attain to what he termed 

 15. inner freedom. From this hard-won height he contem- 



Goethe's . i i • i i i 



'inner plated wliat was going on around him, elaborated a 

 serene and dignified philosophy of life which he did not 

 teach, but of which he gave lasting testimony in the 

 brilliant productions of his poetic genius. He crowned 

 his life and his work with the unique tragedy of ' Faust,' 

 in which the highest problems of life are treated in a 

 manner consistent with the deepest interests of nine- 

 teenth century thought, assimilating the valuable ideas 

 of his age, forecasting in a prophetic manner many 

 developments which to others revealed themselves only 

 gradually during the long course of the century, placing 

 the old problems in a new light and hinting at new ways 

 for their possible solution. Only now, when reviewing, 

 after the lapse of a century, the position which Goethe 

 took up at the time, can we appreciate the great gain 

 which not only German literature, German art, and the 

 German nation, but the whole of the civilised world has 

 reaped through the self-reliance and self-restraint with 

 which Goethe, in those years of strife, tumult, and un- 

 settlement, retired into what appeared to many a sphere 

 of epicurean ataraxy or of egoistic repose. He felt that 

 only by so doing could he fulfil the mission in which he 

 believed, and bring out the truth that was in him. He 

 worked at the definition of problems which exist at all 

 times and everywhere, and are not confined to a special 

 age or a limited society. 



