NOTES.
Notes.
[1] Page 30, Note 1.—The name “Huss” means “goose.” When Huss was condemned to die at the stake he said:
This doggerel with its grim humor on so tragic an occasion is commonly and naturally regarded as foretelling the coming of Martin Luther.
[2] Page 55, Note 2.—Professor Wolf was the first to prove that the Iliad and the Odyssey consisted of a number of epic poems by different poets, which were collected under the name of Homer. For Goethe’s feeling with regard to criticism see the translator’s book Goethe, page 273.
[3] Page 60, Note 3.—This distich is addressed to Karl Philip Moritz, author of an interesting novel in the form of an autobiography, Anton Reiser.
[4] Page 61, Note 4.—This is addressed to F. H. Jacobi, who had written two philosophical novels, Woldemar and Allwill. The difference between him and Moritz is sufficiently characterized in this and the preceding distich.
[5] Page 63, Note 5.—This satirizes the sensuous novels of Timotheus Hermes.
[6] Page 64, Note 6.—Directed against Platner, whose philosophy was a declamation of platitudes. The distich is true of almost all the debates that take place in literary clubs after the reading of a paper.
[7] Page 71, Note 7.—Goethe wrote this in criticism of Reichardt’s praise of the French Revolution.
[8] Page 77, Note 8.—This and the following three distichs are directed against Nicolai, who was the owner of a large publishing-house, but at the same time a mediocre author, shallow and conceited.
[9] Page 85, Note 9.—The Stolberg brothers had been liberal, but suddenly turned Roman Catholic.
[10] Page 86, Note 10.—The pious Count Leopold Stolberg, exaggerating the value of Christian art while deprecating classic taste, said that he would give a whole collection of Greek urns for one Faience vase painted in the manner of Raphael.
[11] Page 87, Note 11.—The censure is true in its general application; but the Xenion is aimed at a man (Johann Heinrich Jung, whose nom de plume was Heinrich Stilling) who did not deserve this castigation. See Goethe, page 16.
[12] Page 88, Note 12.—A severe description of Johann Caspar Lavater. See Goethe, page 28.
[13] Page 89, Note 13.—Also directed against Reichardt. (See Note 7.)
[14] Pages 94 and 102, Note 14.—Schiller renders “Hades” by “Hell” which here retains the classical meaning and does not imply the idea of punishment.
[15] Page 104, Note 15.—Karl Leonard Reinhold (born in Vienna October 26, 1758) was educated as a Jesuit and became professor of philosophy in the Jesuit college of the Barnabites, but renounced the faith of his youth in 1783 and left Vienna for Weimar, where he married the daughter of the poet Wieland. He became professor of philosophy at the University of Jena in 1787 and 1794 in Kiel, where he died April 10, 1823. He was a Kantian and wrote much on Kantian philosophy.
[16] Page 112, Note 16.—Very good as a general criticism. Goethe, however, was on the wrong track, in directing this distich against Newton’s theory of color.
[17] Page 116, Note 17.—Kant called his philosophy transcendental idealism, and his followers insisted upon the importance of transcendentalism. They were opposed by naturalists, who scorned theory and insisted on the facts of experience.
For the meaning of the word “transcendental” see the translator’s Fundamental Problems, p. 30 et passim, and Primer of Philosophy, p. 66. “Transcendent” means what transcends human knowledge, i. e., what is unknowable, but “transcendental” is in Kantian terminology non-sensory or formal knowledge such as pure logic and arithmetic, involving the principles of theory or systematic abstract thought.
[18] Page 120, Note 18.—Here the term “natural law” does not mean laws of nature but the juridical principle based upon primitive natural conditions.
[19] Page 121, Note 19.—Samuel von Puffendorf (1632-1694) was a famous jurist and professor of natural law in Berlin. (See previous note.)
[20] Pages 122 and 123, Note 20.—Kant declared that the man who performed his duty because it gave him pleasure was less moral than he who did it against his own inclinations.
[21] Page 124, Note 21.—Schiller was a disciple and follower of Kant, who finds the conditions of knowledge in the thinking subject, not in the object that is thought. Since a thinking being does not acquire an insight into the laws of form by experience, but establishes them a priori, Kant believes that things have to conform to cognition and not cognition to things. Man thus produces truth out of his own being, and imports it into the objective world. Now it is true that truth and the criterion of truth, namely reason, develop together with mind; for indeed reason is the characteristic feature of mind. Things are real, not true, and truth can dwell in mental representations only. But considering the fact that mind develops from and by experience which originates by a contact with objects, and that reason is but the formal element extracted from experience and systematized—a consideration which Kant did not make because he never proposed the problem of the origin of mind—we shall find that the nature of reason and truth are not purely subjective. Reason is not an arbitrary classification of things (as the nominalists believe), but a formula that describes the necessary and universal relations of the objective world.—For a critical exposition of the problem see the translator’s books on Kant: The Surd of Metaphysics and Kant’s Prolegomena in which the question “Are there things in themselves?” is answered in the negative, but the existence of forms in themselves is insisted upon. See also the chapters on the “A Priori and the Formal” in his Primer of Philosophy; “The Origin of the A Priori” in his Fundamental Problems; and “The Origin of Mind” in The Soul of Man.
[22] Page 134, Note 22.—The caesura has here been placed contrary to the classical rule.
[23] Page 158, Note 23.—Truth cannot directly be taken from reality but is the product of work, for facts must be observed, stated, and systematized so as to become truth.