With the fact before him that formal civilization is
instrumental, no man can afford to run away from it. With the fact in
view that each man needs every other, and needs that every other should
do and be the best he can, no one can afford to withhold help, where it
can be rendered. Finally, seeing that means are limited, and that the
means and services which are crammed into others, without being
spiritually assimilated, breed only indigestion, no one must throw his
services about at random, but see where Nature has prepared the way for
him, and there in modesty do what he can.
To strike the connection, then, between the inward and the outward,
between the spiritual and the conventional, between man and society,
between moral possibility and formal civilization,--to give growth, with
all its immortal issues, a place, and means, and opportunity,--this was
Goethe's aim; and if the execution be less than perfect, as I admit, it
yet suggests the whole; and if the shortcoming be due in part to his
personal imperfections, which doubtless may be affirmed, it yet does not
mar the sincerity of his effort.
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