Wealth-Its Meaning.

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may stand in the way of the adoption of great principles. Ignorance may cover and disfigure facts, and even so warp our judgment as to cause us to maintain and defend erroneous and fallacious theories. Still, notwithstanding all these opposing influences, and out of all this chaos, truth will arise in all its majesty. Our own interest will dictate a policy not at variance but in unison with the designs of Providence, and we shall be led to acknowledge that the soundest principles of economic science are the surest guarantee of our safety and prosperity.

If

As I have said at the outset that wealth is the subjectmatter of political economy, it may be as well to state, that by it the meaning of wealth was immensely enlarged. What was the great error of the advocates of the mercantile system? It was to consider wealth as synonymous with gold and silver, whence came the great anxiety to attract the precious metals to the country, and to hinder by every means their departure, as if their importation constituted the only real gain, and their exportation so much substantial loss. By enlarging the conception of wealth beyond this narrow limit, political economy conferred a great service, and in fact gave quite a new turn to national legislation. Doubtless, we might go farther still. we call wealth, all we can desire, as useful and delightful, we should include under it intelligence, freedom, power, influence, and many other possessions which contribute to our happiness; but inasmuch as these qualities or endowments are neither material nor transferable, political economists found it necessary to restrict the idea of wealth to that which is the result of human labour, material and susceptible of change, or, as Mr Senior put it, to that which has utility, limitation of supply, and transferableness. This may be a limited idea, but it has the advantage of being definite, and it is an important matter in every science to have a clear nomenclature, since confused ideas respecting the meaning of words are an effectual bar to every progress. In the sense of utility there is included whatever is useful or affords pleasure. By limitation of supply, it is meant that the article must be obtainable only at the expense of a certain amount of labour, or by the surmounting of some obstacle, be it greater or smaller, absolute or conditional. And by transferableness, we understand that, unless an article is capable of appropriation and transfer, it cannot be wealth to any one. As with wealth so with capital. To avoid confusion, political economy defines it very closely. In common parlance, we speak of a man having a large capital, as contrasted with a man having a large income; by which we attach to capital the idea of wealth; or we call a moneyed man a large capitalist, confusing the idea of capital with that of money.

VOL. XIX.NO. LXXIV.

K

Mr Senior defines capital an article of wealth, the result of human exertion employed in the production of wealth. What makes an article of wealth capital, is not, therefore, the kind of commodities, but the intention of the capitalist to employ it for purposes of reproduction. Again, however, I must premise that political economy limits the meaning of capital to material objects. Doubtless, the skill of an artist, the genius of a composer, the wisdom of a statesman, the talent of a man of letters, the health and strength of a labourer, are so much capital to their respective possessors. But although these intellectual, moral, or physical qualities may bear the closest analogy to material objects, and might be shewn to be governed by the same laws, they do not enter within the limits of economic science, and they are not included in the idea of capital. With the laws which govern immaterial wealth, the political economist, as such, has nothing to do, but he is not a stranger to the close analogy which the immaterial bears to the material, as the following illustration from the able pen of the late lamented and genial Dr Hamilton in "Excelsior" beautifully proves:"A young scholar is making his first trial of composition, and he fears that this essay will exhaust the sum total of his literary property. He thinks he has a few good ideas, and one or two rather striking illustrations. But if he puts the whole into the present speech or poem, what is to become of him? There will be no assets left; he will be reduced to intellectual bankruptcy. But you say, No fear. An earnest mind is not a bucket but a fountain, and as good thoughts flow out, better thoughts flow in. Good thoughts are gregarious; the bright image or sparkling aphorism, fear not to give it wing, for, lured by its decoy, thoughts of sublimer range and sunnier pinion will be sure to descend and gather round it. As you scatter you'll increase." And it is in this way, that whilst many a thought which might have enriched the world, has lain buried in a sullen or monastic spirit, like a crock of gold in a coffin, the good idea of a frank and forth-spoken man gets currency, and after being improved to the advantage of thousands, has returned to its originator with usury. It has been lent, and so it has not been lost. It has been communicated, and so it has been preserved. It has circulated, and so it has increased. LEONE-LEVI.

Was Goethe a Christian Poet?

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ART. IX.-Was Goethe a Christian Poet?

HERE are two classes of persons to whom the query propounded at the head of this paper will appear a rather startling one. In the first place, it will seem strange to the numerous individuals who turn away with an approximation to a "holy horror" from the writings of the great German poet, and strongly suspect the orthodoxy of those who express admiration of his genius. That many such individuals exist in the world, and especially in our own country, is beyond all doubt; and we would not for a moment question the thorough conscientiousness of their convictions. We respect some of them for their various estimable qualities; but there are two things we would earnestly commend to their attention,—that they should be quite certain they have really read Goethe's works before they pronounce their judgment; and that, if they have perused them, they should try to contemplate them as much as possible from the standpoint of the author himself, instead of from that of their inherent or acquired partialities and prejudices. Rightly to understand, and fitly to criticise, the literary productions of any man, it is absolutely necessary that we should at least endeavour to look with the producer's own eye, and lay aside our pre-conceived notions as to how he ought to write and what he ought to write; and this is a rule which, if binding in the case of our perusal of the works of every one, is especially binding with regard to works like those of Goethe. For the idiosyncrasy of the great German was so distinctive, his individuality, notwithstanding his many-sidedness, was so strongly marked and so clearly defined, that justly to apprehend and appreciate him requires no ordinary exertion, no slight projection of ourselves, as it were, while we read his writings, into his own peculiar sphere. Now, it is only the smaller number who are capable of making such an effort in a calm, patient, reflective, large-minded way; and thus, even, if as already pre-supposed, Goethe's works be read at all (a fact which, in the case of no insignificant section of individuals, we greatly doubt), the dense mist of one-sidedness and bigotry rises between the reader and the page, and prevents him from befittingly appreciating the true meaning which pervades the sentences contained in it. We still remember, after the lapse of long years, the offence given to several excessively good, but rather weak-minded persons, when a probationer of the Free Church, otherwise blameless in his orthodoxy, prefixed as motto to a pamphlet which he published on some ecclesiastical subject or another, the famous quotation from the Westöstlicher Divan, in which Goethe affirms that "the one

peculiar and deepest theme of the world and of mankind remains the battle between belief and unbelief."* It might be supposed that this was a very innocent extract; nay, more, that it was highly laudable, inasmuch as it embodied a comprehensive fundamental truth, at once deeply philosophic and truly religious; but no, it was enough that the quotation was from Goethe; it proved a sore stumbling-block to many, and effectually kept them from reading farther than the titlepage. This incident, which occurred in the circle of our own acquaintance, may seem a little trivial; but "a straw shews how the wind blows"; and there can be no manner of doubt that similar strange notions with regard to the general character of Goethe's writings were, at the time referred to, widely prevalent, and do indeed prevail, although not perhaps to so great an extent, at the present day. Now, it is exceedingly plain that persons tinged with these and like opinions will be much surprised,-possibly even shocked,-to find such a question put as the one which forms the burden of our paper.

There is a second class, however, who will, we believe, experience just the same emotions, although from a cause diametrically opposite to that which we have been attempting to describe. We allude, of course, to the readers whose admiration of Goethe's genius is so intense, that it hurries them into a blind, unreasoning, fanatical hero-worship,-a hero-worship which casts such a glamour on their vision, that in their idol they see a man without a fault, and in his works creations so perfect that not the slightest flaw can be detected in them. If we are compelled to choose between the two extremes, we shall certainly select the former, because it is better to err on the safe side, and to deny to Goethe the possession of any literary and moral excellence,-absurd though the denial be,-than to set him up, as is done by his frantic worshippers, on a pinnacle of supreme dominion, to be adored as the one model man, the great exemplar of all the talents and all the graces. This latter course, so frequently pursued, is to us simply insufferable; and we never hear his devotees loudly declaiming in behalf of "the great German master," without impatiently and almost wrathfully recalling to our mind the many blemishes in Goethe's works, as well as the many sad and serious defects in his character. But let us, in sober earnest, ask the question, Wherefore adopt either extreme? Can we not choose a via media, and while on the one hand we shun the ridiculous hero-worship of certain parties, on the other hand, avoid the bigoted narrow-mindedness which would consign Goethe's

Das eigentliche, einzige und tiefste Thema der Welt-und Menschengeschichte, bleibt der Conflict des Unglaubens und Glaubens."- Goethe's Sämmtliche Werke, vol. iv., p. 264.

Versatility of Goethe's Genius.

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pages to an expurgatory index, and refuse to attribute aught in the shape of Christian colouring to their contents? suredly we can do this, and we are convinced that it is our duty to do it, in accordance with every principle of common justice and impartiality.

But, leaving for a short while the two extreme classes of whom we have hitherto been speaking, and who, we are well aware, will considerably marvel at the bare propounding of the query which forms our theme, let us endeavour to settle a point lying at the very foundation of the aforesaid query, viz., what is it that goes to constitute a Christian poet, in the true and proper sense of the term? Be it noted we enter into no discussion of Goethe's claims to highly exalted rank as a poet simply and solely. His legitimate title to that rank is acknowledged on all sides, even by many of those who call his works immoral, irreligious, and unchristian. In our own estimation, Goethe is one of the three greatest poets of modern Europe, occupying, along with Dante, a throne only second to the royal seat of Shakespeare. His Faust would of itself, although he had never written another book, have fitly bestowed on him this exalted honour,-an honour which, we think, can alone be denied to him by those whose intellects are dwarfed, or who are blinded by unreasoning prejudice. What a wonderful range of the noblest poetical creations we find in the grand cyclus of the entire Goethe-literature! Turning from Faust,with its profundity of thought, its penetrating pathos, its unrivalled knowledge of the world, and its mastery of outward form in each variety of style,-and passing, for example, to Wilhelm Meister, we have in the Lehrjahre the character of Mignon, perfect as a psychological study,-which even our own Scott, mighty master as he was, so poorly imitated in his Fenella, in Peveril of the Peak, -Mignon, whose figure haunts the reader like a dream, and whose strange sad tale is traced with so skilful, so delicate a hand.* Whole volumes might be written on Goethe's heroines especially. At the head of them stands Gretchen, the interest of whose tragic story culminates in that last scene of the first part of Faust, where the author bears us down with him into an abyss of sorrow, that makes the scene to which we refer perhaps the most pathetic passage in modern European literature; and Gretchen is followed by a host of others, minor, indeed, in point of all-absorbing attraction, yet each gifted with a fascination of her own. It is in this marvellous creative power, this originality in the construction of

*We include Goethe's prose fictions under the common title "poetry," as poetry, in the scientific sense of the word, embraces all imaginative writing, whether rhymed or rhymeless.