'the name of Goethe himself reminds one how great for the artist may be the danger of overmuch science; how Goethe, who, in the Elective Affinities and the first part of Faust, does transmute ideas into images, who wrought many such transmutations, did not invariably find the spell-word, and in the second part of Faust presents us with a mass of science which has almost no artistic character at all.' (64)

'Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaften is a high instance of modern art dealing thus with modern life; it regards that life as the modern mind must regard it, but reflects upon it blitheness and repose. Natural laws we shall never modify, embarras us as they may; but there is still something in the nobler or less noble attitude with which we watch their fatal combinations. In Wahlverwandtschaften this entanglement, this network of law, becomes a tragic situation, which which a group of noble men and women work out a supreme dénouement. Who, if he foresaw at all, would fret against circumstances which endow one at the end with so high an experience?' (117)