OF THE SPIRIT. 355 



of the family, relations which in the later school of life 

 acquire larger dimensions and a deeper significance, but 

 are in danger of being lost where and whenever the 

 sense of a higher obligation of mutual and collective 

 responsibility and dependence becomes obliterated or 

 even materially weakened. 



It is an extraordinary phenomenon in modern litera- 

 ture, especially in the higher intellectual literature of 

 Germany, that this view was strongly urged by one who 

 stood outside systematic thought, but who nevertheless 

 absorbed all the best influences of modern science and 

 culture, who had early liberated himself from the fetters 

 of purely conventional and traditional doctrine, and who 

 stands out as the greatest representative of what has 

 been called the doctrine or gospel of Inner Freedom : 

 by one who, although his life reached only into the 

 first third of the century, may perhaps be con- 

 sidered as the greatest representative of Nineteenth 

 Century thought, of its aspirations as much as of some 

 of the most important of its later developments ; exhibit- 

 ing in his own large view of the world and life, its 

 strength as well as its shortcomings and limitations. 

 This was Goethe, who in one of the most philosophical 4s. 



. . 1-1-1 "11-1 Goethe on 



of his imaginative creations laid it down as the highest the spirit 



of worship. 



duty of the teacher and educator to cultivate the spirit 

 of reverence and worship. 1 If we look at the very 



1 See Wilhelm Meister's Wander- 

 jahre in Thomas Carlyle's 'Trans- 

 lations from the German ' (vol. ii. 

 p. 220). "Wilhelm could have 

 wished to gain some previous know- 

 ledge of these sacred things, but 

 his companion answered : ' The 

 Three will doubtless, in return for 



the confidence you show in leaving 

 us your son, disclose to you in their 

 wisdom and fairness what is most 

 needful for you to learn. The 

 visible objects of reverence, which 

 I named sacred things, are collected 

 in this separate circle ; are mixed 

 with nothing, interfered with by 



