But long before imagination has proceeded to the results named, another grand fructifying force has come to its aid, namely, Love. "The ever-womanly leadeth us on." Love,--it is, we may say, a chemical change in the man, like the conversion of starch into sugar, or grape-juice into wine. Full of sweetness and sweet intoxication, it belongs to the profoundest economies of Nature; and he who with his whole soul and body has once loved is another being henceforth. Acid or even putrid fermentations may set in; but what he was before he cannot be again. Goethe, therefore, follows Nature in placing this next to imagination as a producer of growth,--next in Nature and in Goethe's pages, because its alliance with imagination is so immediate and intimate. He who does not idealize does not love.
But here also is peril. Love, while filling Wilhelm's being with those precious heats which are the blind substance of all chivalry and nobility, clothes the stage with the added enchantment of Mariana's presence, and so bewitches the poor youth with still more of that "false tendency" which is his proper Satan. Moreover, by rushing headlong toward consummation, and overleaping the bounds of prudential morality, it brings both upon Mariana and himself sore retributions. Her, poor child, it hurries to the grave; him it pushes to the grave's brink, and stores even his recovered strength with anguish and a lifelong regret.
Goethe is accused of immorality. He does, indeed, depict grave errors without exclaiming over them, without holding up his hands, or playing any pantomime of horror. Moreover, a love pure in its essence, but heedless in its procedure, he persists in naming pure, though heedless. But he indicates, with a rigor that is even appalling, the retributions which pursue levity and precipitation, not to mention things worse. I have read many books which gave more moral _stimulation_ than "Wilhelm Meister"; I have never read any which, while frankly acknowledging that Nature's blessing goes more with noble essence than with decorous form, yet indicates with equal power the iron nerve of moral law that runs through and through the world.
And now, as third performer in this _real_ drama of growth, comes forward a redoubtable figure, the Sense of Self. His reputation, indeed, is not of the best. All, it is true, embrace him privately; but most think it decorous to disavow him in public.