Was du ererbt von deinen Vaetern hast,
  Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen.

  What from thy fathers thou dost inherit, be sure thou
  earn it, that so it may become thine own.

It is only Goethe and Schiller, and especially Goethe, “the strong, much-toiling sage, with spirit free from mists, and sane and clear,” who combine the higher and the lower wisdom, and have skill to put moral truths into forms of words that fix themselves with stings in the reader’s mind.  All Goethe’s work, whether poetry or prose, his plays, his novels, his letters, his conversations, are richly bestrewn with the luminous sentences of a keen-eyed, steadfast, patient, indefatigable watcher of human life.  He deals gravely and sincerely with men.  He has none of that shallow irony by which small men who have got wrong with the world seek a shabby revenge.  He tells us the whole truth.  He is not of those second-rate sages who keep their own secrets, externally complying with all the conventions of speech and demeanour, while privately nourishing unbridled freedom of opinion in the inner sanctuary of the mind.  He handles soberly, faithfully, laboriously, cheerfully, every motive and all conduct.  He marks himself the friend, the well-wisher, and the helper.  I will not begin to quote from Goethe, for I should never end.  The volume of Spruche, or aphorisms in rhyme and prose in his collected works, is accessible to everybody, but some of his wisest and finest are to be found in the plays, like the well-known one in his Tasso, “In stillness Talent forms itself, but Character in the great current of the world.”

But here is a concentrated admonition from the volume that I have named, that will do as well as any other for an example of his temper—­

  “Wouldst fashion for thyself a seemly life?—­
  Then fret not over what is past and gone;
  And spite of all thou mayst have lost behind,
  Yet act as if thy life were just begun. 
  What each day wills, enough for thee to know;
  What each day wills, the day itself will tell. 
  Do thine own task, and be therewith content;
  What others do, that shalt thou fairly judge;
  Be sure that thou no brother-mortal hate,
  Then all besides leave to the Master Power.”

If any of you should be bitten with an unhappy passion for the composition of aphorisms, let me warn such an one that the power of observing life is rare, the power of drawing new lessons from it is rarer still, and the power of condensing the lesson in a pointed sentence is rarest of all.  Beware of cultivating this delicate art.  The effort is only too likely to add one more to that perverse class described by Gibbon, who strangle a thought in the hope of strengthening it, and applaud their own skill when they have shown in a few absurd words the fourth part of an idea.  Let me warmly urge anybody with so mistaken an ambition, instead of painfully distilling poor platitudes of his own, to translate the shrewd saws of the wise browed Goethe.