The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1899-09-08
On Goethe and Schiller, the
Great German Authors.
GOSPEL OF CULTURE AND ART
Reform Through Education Rather
Than Political Revolution
Was Their Ideal.

| DR.. Dewey's lecture on Tuesday
evening took up the German authors,
| Goethe and Schiller, and the influence
of their conceptions of culture and art
| in modern thought. After pointing out
that they commenced with the same
| idea as Rousseau and his French fol-
| lowers, the Importance of the principle
! of individuality and of doing away
with the merely conventional and ar
tificial, the lecturer proceeded to speak
as follows:
THE French were interested in Sc
curing freedom of action for the indi-
vidual, and SO required political rev.
| olution, a change of institutions, gov
| ernmental and economic, since these
seemed to him in the individual and to
keep him from his rightful sphere of
action. The Germans were interested
| rather in the development of the inner
life, in securing to the individual COM
and imaginations. Compared with
this, action and it's expression in insti-
tutiOns seemed external and mechani-
cal. All the great German writer's of
the early part of the century thus
taught Indifference to the region of pol
itics and the necessity of forming the
individual from within. If this could
be secured, social institutions would
10
be a reflex of the change of ideas and
aspirations. Reform through educa-
ton rather than through political rev.
olution was their ideal, and so thor
oughly were the German people filled
with this notion that the German vic
tory over France in '70-'71 has been
called the revenge of the theorist and
SchOOlmaSter over the pOetical man
and the politician. Through this move
ment the Germans became leaders in
philosophy, in science, in music, and
in the forms of life that have most to
do with the inner life; but at the eX-
pense Of the independence and freedom
of the citizen.
The part that Goethe and Schiller
played in this movement was to preach
the gospel of culture and art as the
chief instrumentalities in the process
of intellectual and moral renovation.
These things are generally regarded
as mere refinementS; as accretiOnS, aft
er the serious aims of life are realized;
or even as idle and harmful luxuries.
These writer's regarded them as giving
the clue to all right progress, and as
the central affairs of life. Culture was
set in opposition to nature by ROus
seau, but Goethe regarded it as it's COM
pletion. Nature aims everywhere at
things which are consistent in their
own principle, and which show a har
monious variety all springing from one
vital root. Hence the claim of every
| individual to attain to fullness of eX-
perience, touching life upon all it's
sides, and not thwarting or narrowing
his life upon any side. This is self
development. But the individual in
following out his career must be true
to the central and single aim of his
ow mature; not be led astray by at
tempting to conform to the conven-
tions, expectations or ideas of others,
or by the various divergent opportuni-
ties for pleasure, success, or even for
service, that present themselves. This
is the idea of limitation or self-renur-
citation. The union of this with full
ness of experience results in culture.
1.-The Importance of literature and art
in life is that they reveal to the indi-
vidual his own destiny, and secure for
him an ideal which is realized in the
conditions of real life, and not in re-
bellion against them"
DR.. Dewey then traced the influence
of these ideas upon the development
of Goethe's literary work from the
Sorrows of Werther" to Faust" and
Wilhelm Meister."F
Speaking of Schiller, he said this
writer apologized in one of his writings
for occupying himself with something
apparently so far remote from the con-
ditions of the time (the subsection OF
Germany by Napoleon), but that he
does so in the conviction that here is
the secret, in the long run, of the rem
edy for social ills. The root of social
difficulties is the distance between the
class of refined and cultured people and
the class of laboring men. The hrst
have the ideal element, but they mere
ly possess it; they do not use 1t. Inc
second has force, vigOr, nature, put
it is not animated by high purposes.
Again, the difficulty may be stated as
the divorce between the knowing and
the doing class. The former are so
elevated into the region of generallZa-
lions that they do not see the details
of applications; while the latter are so
absorbed in the routine, the particu-
lars of practice, that they do not look
up into the region of the principles that
give their activity value. Now the
significant fact is that 1t requires both
ideas and their application or realiza-
ton; both culture and force; general
principles and special materials. The
social order must become genuine
work art, and this can happen only
when its members are imbued with the
artistic spirit.
The speaker closed by saying that to
the practical Anglo-Saxon mind such
conceptions seem remote and lacking