ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

when sport is made business. Many of the American manufacturers discourage road racing, and their vehicles are not made for a speed greater than twenty-five miles an hour when doing their utmost. Some, however, are very ambitious to try conclusions with their European competitors as to speed over long distances. Mr. Edison has confessed to the desire to beat the world when he has completed the task upon which he is now engaged. His, however, is to be an electric carriage. As much intelligence is required to drive a gasoline as an electric vehicle, and probably it is a trifle more difficult to keep in order.

The first auto-propelling road carriages were for steam, and there are those who believe to-day that the best automobile will be propelled by steam. Several American manufacturers are preparing to put steam carriages on the market, even steam buggies. In Europe for heavy coaches those designed for steam propulsion are now considered satisfactory. Road steam engines for heavy loads at slow rates of speed have long been used in Europe, where there are hard roads fit for such traffic. For light wagons the use of steam is another matter. Some critics say that the fact that the law requires that each

operator of a steam engine shall have a license will prevent steam road motors from becoming popular. This does not seem to be an insuperable objection.

In addition to electric, gasoline, and steam motor vehicles, we have compressed air, carbonic acid gas, alcohol, and ammonia motor vehicles. The first three have been proved to be practical road vehicles; the others are, to an extent, still in the experimental stage, though companies with large capitalization have been organized to do the trucking in great cities with heavy wagons propelled by compressed air. The promotors of this enterprise do not agree that there is anything experimental in their project.

The

As to the best name for these new road motors there is much discussion. French Academy has done what it could to settle the matter by deciding that "automobile" is a properly constructed word. This dictum may be binding in France, but here the makers prefer " motorvehicle." Others, with a fondness for picturesqueness of expression, like "horseless carriage." It may be that none of these will be satisfactory to the public, as each is long, each a big mouthful of syllables. There is sure to be a shorter-one or two syllables at the most.

[graphic][merged small]
[graphic][merged small][merged small]

A

The Goethe Anniversary

By Kuno Francke

Professor of German Literature at Harvard University

Ta time when all Germany is preparing to celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth birthday of Goethe, it seems proper to consider for a moment the essential features in the character of Germany's foremost poet, to pass in brief review those works of his which even now stand out as embodying vital problems and aspirations of modern society. The number and the significance of these works are all the more inpressive if we remember that, apart from his lyrics and ballads, which are beyond cavil, Goethe has produced little which from the merely formal point of view is not open to serious criticism.

First, of course, in order of spiritual significance, stands his "Faust." It would be folly to overlook the artistic defects of this drama, the looseness of its composition, the lack of proportion between the Gretchen episode and the rest of the First Part, the absence of outward atonement for Faust's guilt, the motley symbolism of the Second Part. But the fact remains that in all modern literature there is no poem which is so complete an embodiment of what is noblest in modern life its restless activity, its incessant striving from lower spheres of existence to higher ones, from the sensuous to the spiritual, from enjoyment to work, from creed to deed, from self to humanity.

Goethe's "Faust" is a glorification of individual culture hallowed by devotion to collective tasks. Isolation, selfishness, negation, are shown to destroy themselves. Mephisto, the arch scoffer and deceiver, is defeated, because he has no conception of the all-conquering power of a steadfast Euphorion, the representative of uncontrolled fancy and willful aspiration, while presuming to soar to inaccessible heights, falls helpless to the ground. Faust is saved, because he makes every new experience a stepping-stone for a higher and more complete form of existence. Sin itself seems to ennoble him. After he has seen Gretchen in the dungeon, after he has been overwhelmed at

the sight of her fate, by "mankind's collected woe," he seems to be raised above all lower desire. Henceforth his life belongs to the world at large, and every new temptation he turns into an opportunity for wider activity. He ends as a champion of democracy; his last vision is that of a free people living on a free soil; and, dying, he proclaims the redeeming power of ceaseless endeavor:

Yes! to this thought I hold with firm persistence;

The last result of wisdom stamps it true: He only earns his freedom and existence Who daily conquers them anew.

Next to "Faust" stands "Wilhelm Meister." Here, again, it is easy to see artistic shortcomings. We often feel, in reading this book, as though we could not breathe in this atmosphere of erratic dilettanteism. We even feel something akin to contempt for these men and women who keep a most scrupulous account of their own precious emotions, who bestow the most serious consideration upon a host of insignificant trifles, and who, at the same time, only too often are found erring in the simplest question of right and wrong. With the exception of Mignon and Philine, the child of the past and the child of a day, there is not a single prominent character in the book capable of forgetting himself and living unreflectively for the homely duties of the present. But, while this is true, it is also true that the one ideal running through this book, the one goal for which nearly all of its leading characters are striving, is this very self-forgetfulness-self-forgetfulness as the result of fullest self-development and self-expansion.

This is an ideal so far removed from selfishness that it may be called the gospel of a secular Christianity. If the teaching of Christianity rests on the belief that every individual soul has within it the possibility of salvation, the teaching of "Wilhelm Meister" rests on the belief that every individual mind has within it a tendency toward complete manifestation

of itself. The former preaches the necessity of individual salvation in order to bring about the kingdom of heaven, the latter preaches the necessity of individual self-development in order to raise mankind to a higher level. The former is democratic, the latter is aristocratic; but both are opposed to spiritual tyranny of any sort. To both the inner motive, the mental effort, the moral striving, are the things which decide the worth of a man. Both believe in the essential goodness of human nature, which makes it possible for us to preserve our better self even in error and sin; nay, to attain, through error and sin, to deeper insights and loftier ideals.

[blocks in formation]

Tolstoï's "Anna Karénina" we are confronted with utter hopelessness and annihilation, we are led in Goethe's "Elective Affinities" from moral ruin to moral victory. Ottilie, the heroine of the novel, is one of those sensitive natures to whom all knowledge comes by intuition, none through reflection; who act only under the stress of an irresistible impulse. Sure

of her own feelings for Edward, assured, moreover, that Edward and Charlotte desire nothing more fervently than a divorce, she does not question the legitimacy of her feelings. Thus she lives on, in her dreamy, plant-like fashion, welcoming every opportunity of meeting her beloved, turning to him as to the light of day, unconscious of the catastrophe that awaits them both; but all of a sudden she comes to see that she has unwittingly sinned, and henceforth her only thought is expiation. She renounces the world; she is going to devote herself to the instruction of the young; for who is better fitted for guiding the young than he who through misfortune has come to know the joy of self-possession? And when she is thwarted in this through Edward's mad desire to win her at any cost, there is nothing left for her but to die. She dies like a saint, by the mere resolve not to live, passing over gradually and placidly into the sphere of the spiritual.

[ocr errors]

Had Goethe written nothing but "Faust," "Wilhelm Meister," and "The Elective Affinities," he would have done enough to entitle him to the foremost place among the literary exponents of the modern view of the world as a living, spiritual organism. But it may truly be said that all his other works, from "Werther" to "Iphigenie," and from "Tasso" to the "Westöstlicher Divan," are imbued with this same exalted conception of human life. Probably no man ever looked at life from so broad a point of view and with so little bias; probably no man ever felt more deeply the divineness of the universe. And surely no other man of the last one hundred and fifty years has rounded out his own personality more consistently and completely.

It is wonderful to see how this personality passed through every conceivable phase of human development without ever losing or exhausting itself; so that the octogenarian could indeed, with the eagerness of a youth, look forward to death as the last and highest consummation. The storm-and-stress enthusiast changes into an admirer of classic antiquity, the impassioned poet into a patient investigator, the son of nature into a statesman and cabinet minister. But here the chain is not broken. The admirer of classic antiquity returns to the worship of the Middle Ages and revels in romantic melodies; the scientist turns poet once more, and glorifies in sublime rhythms the new conception of life which the study of nature has disclosed to him; the statesman becomes a patron of poetry and art, and lays the foundation of a truly national. stage which at the same time is to embrace the best of all the literatures of the world. And thus is ushered in the last period of this great life, a period of complete universality, in which the smallest and the greatest, the oldest and the newest, the most distant and the nearest, nature and art, politics and religion, the life of the individual and that of nations, seem to lie spread out with equal clearness before the eye of the serene and joyful patriarch, while there is only one unfulfilled desire disturbing the calmness of his soul-the boundless and indomitable desire for the infinite.

Truly, the commemoration of such a life as this belongs not to Germans alone, but to the whole civilized world.

By Hamilton W. Mabie

[graphic]

THE

HE results of the series of nine contests or trials of skill and strength between Oxford and Cambridge on the one side and Harvard and Yale on the other, at the Queen's Club, West Kensington, London, on the afternoon of Saturday, July 22, were known in the United States earlier by the clock than they were actually decided here, and will have been matter of history for weeks when this report appears in The Outlook; but the charm and significance of the day, the field, the combatants, and the audience will not soon fade from the memory of those who hung upon the issue of the final race as if it were of international moment. It was a struggle in every sense; for it was a well-fought fight, undetermined until the last three minutes of the long two hours and a half; but it was pre-eminently a struggle between friends. The undercurrent of good feeling was constantly manifesting itself in cheers and counter-cheers for work well done, whether done for one side or the other. There was something stirring in the spectacle of generous rivalry between the representative young men of two great countries. One could not but feel that there was something prophetic in it; an invisible background of unity which gave the contest of strength the harmony of strenuous struggle and entire good feeling.

THE ROYAL BOX

In it are the Prince of Wales, Duke and Duchess of York, and Mr. Choate.

This thought was happily expressed two days later in the columns of the London "Standard," a journal not given to exaggeration or sentimentality:

But young men at the age of university students can mingle in the mimic strife of the cricketfield, the river, or the cinder path without any danger of lasting irritation being produced by failure, or boastful exultation by victory. It is in youth that the best friendships are formed between man and man, and likewise between men of different nations, before the suspicion, the cynicism, and the selfishness which may come in later years have disqualified the soil for the reception of more generous seeds. There are many causes of coolness, not only between different countries, but between class and class, which only greater familiarity between them is needed to disperse. Nothing but good is likely to result from the social approximation which is now springing up between those in whose hands will be the shaping of the Anglo-Saxon race. Aside, however, from the significance of the meeting between Harvard and Yale. and Oxford and Cambridge, the spectacle was full of intrest and char The after

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »