We looked at the letter by turns, and were pleased both with the clear style and the fine handwriting.  Goethe bestowed several other words of affectionate reminiscence upon his friend, until it was nearly eleven o’clock, and we departed.

* * * * *

Wednesday, October 15.—­I found Goethe in a very elevated mood this evening, and had the pleasure of hearing from him many significant remarks.  We talked about the state of the newest literature, when Goethe expressed himself as follows: 

“Deficiency of character in individual investigators and writers is,” he said, “the source of all the evils of our newest literature.

“In criticism, especially, this defect produces mischief to the world, for it either diffuses the false instead of the true, or by a pitiful truth deprives us of something great, that would be better.

“Till lately, the world believed in the heroism of a Lucretia—­of a Mucius Scaevola—­and suffered itself, by this belief, to be warmed and inspired.  But now comes your historical criticism, and says that those persons never lived, but are to be regarded as fables and fictions, divined by the great mind of the Romans.  What are we to do with so pitiful a truth?  If the Romans were great enough to invent such stories, we should at least be great enough to believe them.

“Till lately, I was always pleased with a great fact in the thirteenth century, when the Emperor Frederic the Second was at variance with the Pope, and the north of Germany was open to all sorts of hostile attacks.  Asiatic hordes had actually penetrated as far as Silesia, when the Duke of Liegnitz terrified them by one great defeat.  They then turned to Moravia, but were here defeated by Count Sternberg.  These valiant men had on this account been living in my heart as the great saviors of the German nation.  But now comes historical criticism, and says that these heroes sacrificed themselves quite uselessly, as the Asiatic army was already recalled, and would have returned of its own accord.  Thus is a great national fact crippled and destroyed, which seems to me most abominable.”

After these remarks on historical critics, Goethe spoke of another class of seekers and literary men.

“I could never,” said he, “have known so well how paltry men are, and how little they care for really high aims, if I had not tested them by my scientific researches.  Thus I saw that most men care for science only so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence.

“In belles lettres it is no better.  There, too, high aims and genuine love for the true and sound, and for their diffusion, are very rare phenomena.  One man cherishes and tolerates another, because he is by him cherished and tolerated in return.  True greatness is hateful to them; they would fain drive it from the world, so that only such as they might be of importance in it.  Such are the masses; and the prominent individuals are not better.