282 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 
XII. 
Man. 
WHEN Goethe declares, “We are eternally in contact 
with problems. Man is an obscure being; he knows 
little of the ‘world, and of himself least of all,’"—he 
almost repeats what J. J. Rousseau says in Emile,” 
“We have no measure for this huge machine (the 
world); we cannot calculate its relations; we know 
neither its primary laws nor its final cause; we do not 
know ourselves; we know neither our nature nor our 
active principle.” 
Such and such-like quotations are wont to be made 
to us as justifying and confirming assertions of the 
narrowness of our powers of understanding, and of the 
limits of science. But in Anthropology we cannot pos- 
sibly attribute any greater authority to the worthy J. J. 
Rousseau than to a Father of the Church; and to the 
Goethe, whose casual utterances are transmitted to pos- 
terity by Eckermann, we oppose the other Goethe, who 
in the fulness of youthful vigour, exclaims— 
Joy, supreme Creation of Nature, feeling the power 
All sublimest thoughts, which lifted her as she made thee, 
In thyself to re-echo— * 
and who conceives the most beautiful organization, as he 
* Freue dich, héchstes Geschipf der Natur, du fiihlest dich fihig 
Ihr den héchsten Gedanken, zu dem sie schaffend sich aufschwang, 
Nachzudenken — © 
