502 GERMANIC LITERATURE 



Geflihl mir nicht!" (Do not confuse my feelings), one should not 

 forget to add that the same turn of expression is found more often 

 still in the works of the gentle Eichendorff, who does not know feel- 

 ings of such a nature. 



Such experiences have made us more circumspect in daring to 

 jump at uncertain general conclusions because of an isolated parallel 

 passage. We are no longer astonished at such wild flights, nor do we 

 regard them as particularly daring. We believe the words of Goethe: 

 " The mistake of weak minds is that in reflecting they immediately go 

 from the particular to the general, instead of seeking the general in the 

 whole." We should likewise bear well in mind what Goethe said about 

 hypotheses in general: "Hypotheses are scaffoldings that are placed 

 in front of a building, but are taken down after the building is fin- 

 ished. They are indispensable to the laborer, only one must not 

 mistake the scaffolding for the building itself." Yet how often 

 philologians in the last decades have mistaken the scaffolding for the 

 building itself! How often they have fitted together a scaffolding by 

 eliminating or combining elements logically contradictory or homo- 

 geneous, and on this they have then undertaken their investigations, 

 the results of which were naturally only valid for this scaffolding but 

 not for the structure itself. Neither the beginning nor the end in 

 philology will be readied by leaps and bounds hypothetical in char- 

 acter. Only the one who starts from the safe mean and goes either 

 forward or backward step by step will approach nearer the goal 

 behind and in front. And even though he himself does not reach it. 

 still, he will have paved the way for others on which they, too, in 

 turn will get a little farther. 



We have recently been devoting especial attention again to the 

 art of interpretation. We are no longer so readily contented with 

 the simple logical understanding of the text; we give closer attention 

 to the context and to the situation through which the poet or his 

 character speak. We look more critically to see whether the word is 

 to be taken in a broad or narrow sense, in a real or figurative meaning. 

 The attempt, at one time the fashion, to understand everything in a 

 pregnant sense, or word for word, has greatly misled Fauxt criticism 

 particularly. " Warum musstest du inich an den Schandgesellen 

 >chn:jeden? '' (Why fetter me to the felon-scoundrel?) cries Faust to 

 the Kan lopirit . and from this, the far-reaching conclusion has been 

 reached that Mephistophelr.s did not originally appear in Goethe's 

 Fau.-t-drama as the devil, but as a servant of the Karthspirit. The 

 fact is. we are really dealing with a form of wranirling with the divin- 

 ity, current in all languages, in which the human being fixes the 

 blame and n sponsibility upon higher beings for what he himself 

 has committed under their very eyes. 



In our dav the auxiliary sciences have reached an astonishing 



