GOETHE'S "FAKBENLEHKE." 75 



vidual antithesis of endowment like that here indi- 

 cated. 



So far as science is a work of ordering and classifi- 

 cation, so far as it consists in the discovery of analogies 

 and resemblances which escape the common eye of 

 the fundamental identity which often exists among 

 apparently diverse and unrelated things so far, in 

 short, as it is observational, descriptive, and imagi- 

 native, Goethe, had he chosen to make his culture ex- 

 clusively scientific, might have been without a master, 

 perhaps even without a rival. The instincts and ca- 

 pacities of the poet lend themselves freely to the 

 natural-history sciences. But when we have to deal 

 with stringently physical and mechanical conceptions, 

 such instincts and capacities are out of place. It was 

 in this region of mechanical conceptions that Goethe 

 failed. It was on this side that his sphere of endow- 

 ment was sliced away. He probably was not the only 

 great man who possessed a spirit thus antithetically 

 mixed. Aristotle himself was a mighty classifier, but 

 not a stringent physical reasoner. And had Xewton 

 attempted to produce a Faust, the poverty of his in- 

 tellect on the poetic and dramatic side might have been 

 rendered equally manifest. But here, if not always, 

 Xewton abstained from attempting that for which he 

 had no gift, while the exuberance of Goethe's nature 

 caused him to undertake a task for which he had neither 

 ordination or vocation, and in the attempted execution 

 of which his deficiencies became revealed. 



One task among many one defeat amid a hundred 

 triumphs. But any recognition on my part of Goethe's 

 achievements in other realms of intellectual action 

 would justly be regarded as impertinent. You -re- 

 member the story of the first Napoleon when the Aus- 

 trian plenipotentiary, in arranging a treaty of peace, 

 6 



