Part 130

+Thätigkeit+, activity.

The English word ‘character’ is so varied in its application that it requires always the greatest discrimination to decide upon its translation, and in this case more than ever. After careful consideration it is thought to be equivalent here to: ‘the personal dignity of a man’.

+die Lebensbeschreibung desselben.+

+welche dazu dienen, die Menschheit stets von neuem zu beleben.+

Section 161.

OPINIONS AS TO ENGLISH EDUCATION.

II.

Goethe (S. 5, N. 2), in one of his conversations with Eckermann at Weimar, once observed: “It is very strange, and I know not whether it lies in race, in climate, in soil, or in their healthy education, but certainly Englishmen seem to have a great advantage over most other men. We see here in Weimar only a minimum of them, and those, probably, by no means the best specimens, and yet what splendid fellows they are! And although they come here as seventeen-year-old youths, yet they by no means feel strange in this strange land; on the contrary, their entrance and bearing in society is so confident and quiet, that one would think they were everywhere the masters, and the whole world belonged to them.”

“I should not like to affirm, for all that,” replied Eckermann, “that the English gentlemen in Weimar are cleverer, better educated, and better hearted than our young men.”

“That is not the point,” said Goethe; “their superiority does not lie in such things; neither does it lie in their birth and fortune; it lies precisely in their having the courage to be what nature made them. There is no halfness about them. They are complete men. Sometimes complete fools also, that I heartily admit, but even that is something, and has its weight.”

Thus (App. § 14), in Goethe’s eyes, the Englishmen fulfilled, to a great extent, the injunction given by Lessing to those who would be men:

“Think wrongly, if you please, but think for yourselves!”—S. SMILES, “SELF-HELP.”

= one day.

‘Very’ is often rendered by the superlative of the adv. +hoch+.

‘whether it lies’ may be elegantly translated by omitting the conjunction ‘whether’ and using the inversion.

+im heimatlichen Boden.+

+heilsam.+

Say ‘but it seems to be certain that Englishmen possess a great superiority over most other men’.

a minimum = very few.

= and these (+dies+) are probably by no means the best, and yet (+dennoch aber+) they are (+sind es+) splendid fellows!

a thirty-year-old man, +ein dreißigjähriger Mann+.

+Auftreten+, n.

+Benehmen+, n.

+sicher.+

Render ‘would’ by the Impf. Subj. of +mögen+, since the sentence is equivalent to ‘that one would be inclined to think’. The following verbs must be constructed according to App. §§ 29 and 30.

Supply ‘alone’ after ‘them’.

for all that, +aber doch+, to be placed before ‘not’.

+~Johann Peter Eckermann~, geboren 1792 zu Winsen in der preußischen Provinz Hannover, gestorben den 3. Dez. 1854 zu Weimar, war viele Jahre als Göthes Privatsekretär thätig und ist der Welt am bekanntesten durch die von ihm nach Göthes Tode veröffentlichten ‘Gespräche mit Göthe’. Er war auch der Herausgeber+ (editor) +von Göthes ‘Nachgelassenen Werken’.+