Delphi Collected Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe \(Illustrated\) pdfdrive com

FROM OTTILIE’S DIARY

“It is strange how men can have the heart to take such pains with the pictures

of those hideous monkeys. One lowers one’s-self sufficiently when one looks at

them merely as animals, but it is really wicked to give way to the inclination to

look for people whom we know behind such masks.”

“It  is  a  sure  mark  of  a  certain  obliquity,  to  take  pleasure  in  caricatures  and

monstrous  faces,  and  pigmies.  I  have  to  thank  our  kind  Assistant  that  I  have

never been vexed with natural history; I could never make myself at home with

worms and beetles.”

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“Just now he acknowledged to me, that it was the same with him. ‘Of nature,’

he  said,  ‘we  ought  to  know  nothing  except  what  is  actually  alive  immediately

around us. With the trees which blossom and put out leaves and bear fruit in our

own  neighborhood,  with  every  shrub  which  we  pass  by,  with  every  blade  of

grass  on  which  we  tread,  we  stand  in  a  real  relation.  They  are  our  genuine

compatriots. The birds which hop up and down among our branches, which sing

among  our  leaves,  belong  to  us;  they  speak  to  us  from  our  childhood  upward,

and we learn to understand their language. But let a man ask himself whether or

not  every  strange  creature,  torn  out  of  its  natural  environment,  does  not  at  first

sight  make  a  sort  of  painful  impression  upon  him,  which  is  only  deadened  by

custom.  It  is  a  mark  of  a  motley,  dissipated  sort  of  life,  to  be  able  to  endure

monkeys, and parrots, and black people, about one’s self.”

“Many times when a certain longing curiosity about these strange objects has

come  over  me,  I  have  envied  the  traveler  who  sees  such  marvels  in  living,

everyday connection with other marvels. But he, too, must have become another

man. Palm-trees will not allow a man to wander among them with impunity; and

doubtless his tone of thinking becomes very different in a land where elephants

and tigers are at home.”

“The  only  inquirers  into  nature  whom  we  care  to  respect,  are  such  as  know

how to describe and to represent to us the strange wonderful things which they

have seen in their proper locality, each in its own especial element. How I should

enjoy once hearing Humboldt talk!”

“A  cabinet  of  natural  curiosities  we  may  regard  like  an  Egyptian  burying-

place,  where  the  various  plant  gods  and  animal  gods  stand  about  embalmed.  It

may be well enough for a priest-caste to busy itself with such things in a twilight

of  mystery.  But  in  general  instruction,  they  have  no  place  or  business;  and  we

must  beware  of  them  all  the  more,  because  what  is  nearer  to  us,  and  more

valuable, may be so easily thrust aside by them.”

“A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single

good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows on rows

of  natural  objects,  classified  with  name  and  form.  For  what  is  the  result  of  all

these,  except  what  we  know  as  well  without  them,  that  the  human  figure

preëminently and peculiarly is made in the image and likeness of God?”

“Individuals  may  be  left  to  occupy  themselves  with  whatever  amuses  them,

with  whatever  gives  them  pleasure,  whatever  they  think  useful;  but  ‘the  proper

study of mankind is man.’“

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