what "Ideas"

    I

   have incorporated in my

    Faust

   . Just as if I myself knew!—or could describe it, even if I did know!' Of course Goethe's great poem contains an Idea, if by that word we mean in a poem what we mean by

    life

   in anything living; but it is not by dissection and analysis that we shall discover it. 'He who wishes,' says Goethe in

    Faust

   , 'to examine

   and describe anything living first does his best to expel the life. Then he has got the dead parts in his hand; but what is wanting is just the spiritual bond.' It is my purpose—a purpose not easy of fulfilment—to avoid this method of dissection and to place before you living realities, not anatomical specimens.

   But before we plunge

    in medias res

   and grapple our present subject, namely the old Faust-legend, I should like to say just a few words in order to show from what standpoint I think we should regard Goethe as a poet and a thinker—for that he is great both as a poet and as a thinker cannot be denied.

   Goethe describes his own philosophy as the philosophy of action. He believed in impulse, in inspiration, in action, rather than in reflexion, analysis and logic. 'Reflect not!' he makes Iphigenie exclaim—'Reflect not! Grant freely, as thou feel'st!' And in one of his Epigrams he says:

   Such theory of inspiration is thoroughly

   Greek, reminding one of Plato's 'muse-inspired madman' and of what Sophocles is related to have said to Aeschylus; 'Thou, Aeschylus, always dost the right thing—but unconsciously (

    ἀλλ΄ οὐκ εἰδώϛ γε

   ).' Thus it was also with Goethe. All intellectual hobbies and shibboleths, all this endless wearisome discussion and dissection and analysis and criticism and bandying about of

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