VI - LIFE, OR MECHANISM—WHICH?

Summary

“Tu cuncta superno

Ducis ab exemplo, pulchrum pulcherimus ipse

Mundum mente gerens, similique imagine formans.”

Boethius, De Consol., 9.

“What time this world's great workmaister did cast

To make all things such as we now behold,

It seems that He before His eyes had plast

A goodly patterne, to whose perfect mould

He fashioned them as comely as He could,

That now so fair and seemly they appear;

As naught may be amended anywhere.

That wondrous patterne, wheresoe'er it be,

Whether in Earth, laid up in secret store,

Or else in Heaven, that no man may it see

With sinful eyes, for fear it to deflore,

Is perfect beauty.”

—Spenser.

One day the poet Goethe, when in his advanced age, was riding home to Weimar with his friend Eckermann, and conversing on the immortality of the soul. They turned by Tiefurt into the Weimar road, and stopped at a spot, where, like other travellers, I have often meditated on Goethe's career; and they had from that outlook a majestic view of the setting sun. The great poet and philosopher remained for many minutes in perfect silence, and at last said with mystic but tremorless emphasis, “Untergehend sogar ist's immer dieselbige Sonne. Setting, nevertheless the sun is always the same sun. I am fully convinced that our spirit is a being of a nature quite indestructible, and that its activity continues from eternity to eternity.”