And this is part of his hymn for man made in the divine image, "THE GODLIKE."
"Hail to the Unknown, the Higher Being Felt within us!
"Unfeeling As nature, Still shineth the sun Over good and evil; And on the sinner, Smile as on the best, Moon and stars. Fate too, &c.
"There can none but man Perform the Impossible. He understandeth, Chooseth, and judgeth; He can impart to the Moment duration.
"He alone may The good reward, The guilty punish, Mend and deliver; All the wayward, anomalous Bind in the useful.
"And the Immortals, Them we reverence As if they were men, and Did, on a grand scale, What the best man in little Does, or fain would do.
"Let noble man Be helpful and good; Ever creating The Right and the Useful; Type of those loftier Beings of whom the heart whispers."
This standard is high enough. It is what every man should express in action, the poet in music!
And this office of a judge, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and of a sacred oracle, to whom other men may go to ask when they should choose a friend, when face a foe, this great genius does not adequately fulfil. Too often has the priest left the shrine to go and gather simples by the aid of spells whose might no pure power needs. Glimpses are found in his works of the highest spirituality, but it is blue sky seen through chinks in a roof which should never have been builded. He has used life to excess. He is too rich for his nobleness, too judicious for his inspiration, too humanly wise for his divine mission. He might have been a priest; he is only a sage.
An Epicurean sage, say the multitude. This seems to me unjust. He is also called a debauchee. There may be reason for such terms, but it is partial, and received, as they will be, by the unthinking, they are as false as Menzel's abuse, in the impression they convey. Did Goethe value the present too much? It was not for the Epicurean aim of pleasure, but for use. He, in this, was but an instance of reaction, in an age of painful doubt and restless striving as to the future. Was his private life stained by profligacy? That far largest portion of his life, which is ours, and which is expressed in his works, is an unbroken series of efforts to develop the higher elements of our being. I cannot speak to private gossip on this subject, nor even to well-authenticated versions of his private life. Here are sixty volumes, by himself and others, which contain sufficient evidence of a life of severe labor, steadfast forbearance, and an intellectual growth almost unparalleled. That he has failed of the highest fulfilment of his high vocation is certain, but he was neither Epicurean nor sensualist, if we consider his life as a whole.