GOETHE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."1 SIR,—In your article entitled " They " in your issue of August 29th you quote Goethe to the effect that "nothing tends more to pervert one's natural character than the wish to be unlike 'other people, and nothing tends more to main- tain the sanity of our minds than to live the everyday, life of those around us." I do not know from what work of Goethe's you have quoted these words, but your quotation standing by itself certainly gives a somewhat erroneous impression of Goethe's standpoint, because he himself did not wish to be altogether like the people of his time, as may be seen from the following utterance of his in the "Conversations of G-oethe with Eckermann " in the year 1828:—" There is something more or less wrong among us old Europeans. Our relations are far too artificial and complicated ; our diet and mode of life want nature, and our social intercourse is without proper love and goodwill. Every one is smooth and polite, but no one has the courage to be candid and true, so that an honest man with natural views and feelings is in a very awkward position. It makes one wish one had been born in the South Sea Islands, as a so-called savage, so as to have had a pure and unadulterated enjoyment of human life."—I am, Sir, &a.,
Pairleigh, near Okehampton. F. R. Cam
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