" But ask a conclave of sober
_savans_ to listen to reports on the natural-spiritual history of babies
and little children,--ask them to join, one and all, in this piece of
discovery, spending labor and lifetime in watching the sports, the
moods, the imaginations, the fanciful loves and fears, the whole baby
unfolding of these budding revelations of divine uses in Nature,--and
see what they will think of your sanity. You may, indeed, if such be
your humor, observe these matters, nay, even write books upon them, and
still escape the lunatic asylum,--_provided_ you do so in the way of
pleasantry. In this case, the gravest _savant_, if he have children, may
condescend to listen, and even to smile. But ask him to attend to this
_in his quality of man of science_, and no less seriously than he would
investigate the history of mud-worms, and you become ridiculous in his
eyes.
Goethe is guiltless of this inversion of interest. Truth of outward
Nature he respects; truth of the soul he reverences. He can really
_imagine_ men,--that is, can so depict them that they shall not be mere
bundles of finite quantities, a yard of this and a pound of that, but so
that the illimitable possibilities and immortal ancestries of man shall
look forth from their eyes, shall show in their features, and give to
them a certain grace of the infinite.
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