the measure and judge of these things. Why should I take them on trust?
And, therefore, what he says of religion, of passion, of marriage, of
manners, property, of paper money, of periods or beliefs, of omens,
of luck, or whatever else, refuses to be forgotten.

Take the most remarkable example that could occur of this tendency to
verify every term in popular use. The Devil had played an important
part in mythology in all times. Goethe would have no word that does
not cover a thing. The same measure will still serve: "I have never
heard of any crime which I might not have committed." So he flies at
the throat of this imp. He shall be real; he shall be modern; he shall
be European; he shall dress like a gentleman, and accept the manner,
and walk in the streets, and be well initiated in the life of Vienna,
and of Heidelberg, in 1820,--or he shall not exist. Accordingly, he
stripped him of mythologic gear, of horns, cloven foot, harpoon tail,
brimstone, and blue-fire, and, instead of looking in books and pictures,
looked for him in his own mind, in every shade of coldness, selfishness,
and unbelief that, in crowds, or in solitude, darkens over the human
thought,--and found that the portrait gained reality and terror by
everything he added, and by everything he took away. He found that the
essence of this hobgoblin, which had hovered in shadow about the
habitations of men, ever since they were men, was pure intellect,
applied,--as always there is a tendency,--to the service of the senses:
and he flung into literature, in his Mephistopheles, the first organic
figure that has been added for some ages, and which will remain as
long as the Prometheus. I have no design to enter into any analysis
of his numerous works. They consist of translations, criticisms, dramas,
lyric and every other description of poems, literary journals, and
portraits of distinguished men. Yet I cannot omit to specify the Wilhelm
Meister.