The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1910-03-21
The Philosophy OF Goethe AS
Based Upon Study OF Faust

tho teachers of the public schools of Bir-
mingham, who have been making q study
| OF Faust:
| The age in which we live might be
characterized by most pronounced tend
ency to doubt. In every department of
science. philosophy and theology we are
confronted with questions and doubts.
The marvellous progress of this and the
preceding century has filled US with UNI
rest, dependency and sometimes despair.
Not a few look back with sorrowful long
ing to the former days of unquestloning
faith and sweet, though blind submis-
sion.
| All this has come upon US with start
ling rapidity. Yet all this was anticipat-
ed more than a century ago in Germany
by Emmanuel Kant, who met these philo-
sophie and religious doubts and paved
the way for Schelling and Hegel, who
dispelled them and offered to many most
satisfactory solution of the problem OF
our time.
The work of the philosopher is to bring
order out of confusion, to resolve con-
tradiction into a higher harmony. But
the poets task is along the same lines.
The avocation of the philosopher and
poet differ only in this. that the one
solves the problem of life in dry, logical
abstraction, while the other gives his
answer in beautiful and sensuous form.
The student of philosophy and the lover
of poetry can each say with Margaret:
"Our priest says the same thing, only In
d;Narap+ x,yo~da
Goethe no less than Kant and Hege
foresaw the perplexing question of our
age. Instead of meeting it with a Crit
ique of Pure Reason a work on log
ic,. he gave us Faust the representa-
tive poem of our time. For, like Faust,
our age is full of doubts and question
ings, of aspiration and despair; and 1t is
isfied with doubts. 1t demands at least
an approximate solution of the signif-
canoe of life and its phenomena.
These questions are by no means new
either. They recur in every generation,
but they thrust themselves with a new
and wider significance under the new and
enlarged conditions of our century. The
much broader in the twentieth century
than in the thirteenth. The answer sat
isfactory then fails to meet the needs Of
today. The medieval period had its fixed
beliefs in theology, science and philoso-
ply. They had a prompt answer to ev-
cry question, back of which was the in
failible authority of the church There
he iolnt W
That was laid out with precision. I'M
plicit obedience was the way of saliva
ton; and salvation from sin was the
highest solicitude and only significance
of life in-the middle ages. In the one
great and representative poem of our
age, the Divine Comedy of Dante, we &C
cordingly see the narrow limitations, the
dogmatic reasonings, the tendency to
other worldliness which characterized
that period. It's traditional conception
of God, of heaven and hell, which to
modern ideas are bigoted. represents the
honest conscientious views of that age.
Dante's Divine Comedy IS as true a
picture of the thirteenth century civii-
zation and it's problems as is Goethe q
Faust of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries These two representative po-
ems give voice to the deepest thought
and highest aspiration of their respective
periods. They do not differ SO much In
the character OF the problems to be
| solved as in the nature of the conditions
given to work out the solution. What is
the chief end of man? What is the mean
ing of God? What is mans relation to
God, of God to man.?
These were the vital questions of the
thirteenth as we'll as of the nineteenth
century-they are the same old questions
of the ages. The answer which Goethe
gives does not differ essentially from
that of Dante; that is to say, both
Goethe and Dante find the essential re-
quisite of mans nature to be freedom
freedom from sin. Man is not himself
when he is slave to sin. He is truly him
self only when he has subordinated the
lower to the higher nature-gained pos
session of self by conquest of self.
The Divine Comedy gives the medieval
idea of the process of soul from sin to
holiness, from death to life, from hell to
heaven" Faust gives the same process
according to the modern idea,-the soul
makes Its way from fate to freedom,
from a narrow individual selfishness to
the larger spiritual life that is one with
man and God.
Dante is strictly in accord with the
conditions of his time when he shifts the
scene of his poem to the next world
rather than this. To him the present
was but an unreal shadow Of that awful
other world, hell. purgatory. paradise.
To Goethe the present is OF eternal anu
supreme Significance. The earth was ell
oquent to Goethe. He pierced to the core
of religion when he discerned God in
nature and in man, in outward expert
ence and inward aspiration, in this world
as we'll as in heaven.
The Divine Comedy has been called
the "Epos Of the Soul and Faust
Soul Drama" In the Italian work, we
have the narrative which reports the soul
as making a straight and upward course
from the realm of sensuaNty and sin to
the life that is one with God. In the Ger
man work we have the confused intricate
plot of the drama, perplexing mysteries
hard to unravel as life is itself. As in
the epos of primitive times, the gods of
fate are continually taking part In the
affairs of man, SO In the Divine Comedy
there Is a continual recognition of super
natural aid.
Divine mercy rescues the soul deep In
sim Ministering angels tighten the way
divine grace supplies the defects OF hui
man weakness.
In Faust, on the contrary, as in the
modern drama, there il no superhunan
agency. for Mephisto Is no power out
side of Faust. 1t is the demon within
| m H. q -x,l.ta Ok. h. ,t,ef