Goethe. He took the artist's view of life which Goethe was the first to state
and indeed in youth had overstated with an astonishing persuasiveness: "the
beautiful is more than the good," said Goethe; "for it includes the good."

It seemed to Oscar, as it had seemed to young Goethe, that "the extraordinary
alone survives"; the extraordinary whether good or bad; he therefore sought
after the extraordinary, and naturally enough often fell into the extravagant.
But how stimulating it was in London, where sordid platitudes drip and drizzle
all day long, to hear someone talking brilliant paradoxes.

Goethe did not linger long in the halfway house of unbelief; the murderer may
win notoriety as easily as the martyr, but his memory will not remain. "The
fashion of this world passeth away," said Goethe, "I would fain occupy myself
with that which endures." Midway in life Goethe accepted Kant's moral
imperative and restated his creed: "A man must resolve to live," he said,
"for the Good, and Beautiful, and for the Common Weal."

Oscar did not push his thought so far: the transcendental was not his field.

It was a pity, I sometimes felt, that he had not studied German as thoroughly
as French; Goethe might have done more for him than Baudelaire or Balzac, for
in spite of all his stodgy German faults, Goethe is the best guide through the
mysteries of life whom the modern world has yet produced. Oscar Wilde stopped
where the religion of Goethe began; he was far more of a pagan and individualist
than the great German; he lived for the beautiful and extraordinary, but not for
the Good and still less for the Whole; he acknowledged no moral obligation; "in
commune bonis" was an ideal which never said anything to him; he cared nothing
for the common weal; he held himself above the mass of the people with an
Englishman's extravagant insularity and aggressive pride. Politics, social
problems, religion--everything interested him simply as a subject of art; life