"Goethe was the clearest, the largest, the most helpful thinker of modern times", said Professor J. A. Walz, Professor of the German Language and Literature, discussing Goethe, on whom he recently lectured.

"It was not easy for Englishmen and Americans in the middle of the nineteenth century," continued Professor Walz, "to do justice to this phenomenon in the world of letters; it had been difficult for Goethe's own countrymen. Whatever has been urged against Goethe,--his supposed lack of moralty, his irreligious, his coldness and selfishness, his disregard of others, his inconstancy,--you may find it all in the works of Borne and Wolfgang Menxel and in other German writers preceding them.

Goethe's Heaven "Vault of Ice"

"His genius was recognized but his character was aspersed. The objections of Englishmen and Americans may be found in a nutshell, as it were, in a letter of John Sterling addressed to Carlyle in 1837:

"'I have been looking at Goethe much as a shying horse looks at a post. In truth, I am afraid of him. . . . There must, as I think, have been some prodigious defect in his mind to let him hold such views as his about women and some other things; and in another respect, I find so much coldness and hollowness as to the highest truths that I feel the Heaven he looks up to is but a vault of ice. . . .

"'This goes far to convince me that he was a profoundly immoral and irreligious spirit. . . . All this may be mere goody weakness and twaddle on my part, but it is a persuasion I cannot escape from.' . . .

"The most outstanding characteristic of Goethe is his humanity. Of him, more perhaps than of any other man, it may be said that nothing human was foreign to him. . . . He liked to associate with persons of every class and kind, brain workers and hand workers, for they all were human, and from all he could learn . . . . A natural total depravity of the human heart was to him inconceivable . . . .

Humanity Shines in Work

"Goethe's humanity shines brightly in his written works. He does not lead us into a fairyland where we may find luxurious rest and aesthetic enjoyment in the contemplation of inane beauty, but presents to us plain reality.

"He followed with astounsing keenness the development of poetry, science, and general culture in other countries.

"It was this interest in the spread of human culture that in 1819 prompted him to carry out a suggestion of a Harvard graduate, Joseph George Coggswell and a wish previously expressed to him in a letter by Edward Everett, to send to the library of Harvard College a set of his collected works.

"In an accompanying note he wrote that the works are presented to the library of the University of Cambridge in New England as a mark of deep interest in its high literary character, and in the successful zeal it has displayed through so long a course of years for the promotion of solid and elegant education.

Scores Chauvinism

"Goethe's humanity did not prevent him from loving his own nation, but it made it impossible for him to hate other nations. In this, Goethe proved himself greatly superior to many professed Christians of our own day. Chauvinism or anything resembling it was utterly foreign to his nature and not a trace of it may be found in any of his works. There is no finer testimony to this aspect of Goethe's character than the words of the great Italian, Benedetto Croce, in the preface to his recent book on Goethe. 'During the sad days of the World War', Croce writes, 'I reread Goethe's works and gained deeper consolation and greater courage from him than I could have gained perhaps in equal measure from any other poet.'"

"No charge ever brought against Goethe is less well founded than the charge of irreligion. The truth is that Goethe is the most religious of modern poets. To be sure, if you understand by religion merely the acceptance of the dogmas, Goethe was not religious, for he did not accept dogmas. Like Jacob of old he wrestled with the Lord and did not let go.