it is true, but which Goethe evidently bore in his mind and applied in this scene: “There are a hundred and eighty-three worlds, which are arranged in the form of a triangle. Each side has sixty worlds in a line, the other three occupying the corners. In this order they touch each other softly, and ever revolve, as in a dance. The space within the triangle is to be considered as a common fold for all, and is called the Field of Truth. Within it lie, moveless, the causes, shapes, and primitive images of all things which have ever existed and which ever shall exist. They are surrounded by Eternity, from which Time flows forth as an effluence upon the worlds.”
The reader must bear in mind that Paris and Helena are together typical of the highest and purest physical embodiment of the idea of Beauty—the Human Form (vide Note 87 to the First Part), and that Helena, alone, afterwards becomes the symbol, both of Beauty and of the Classic element in Art and Literature. The Mothers, therefore, (admitting the significance of the name, which suggested their use to Goethe) must of necessity symbolize the original action of those elemental forces in Man, out of which grew the æsthetic development of the race, in whatever form. We may find the primitive source of all science in material necessity; our other knowledge is based upon the operation of natural laws: but the Idea of the Beautiful has a more mysterious origin, springs from a diviner necessity, and finds only hints, not perfect results, in the operations of Nature,
Goethe made it a rule to discover some positive, however dimly outlined, Form, in which to clothe abstract ideas. This is always a difficult and sometimes a hazardous experiment. Here the forms, instead of more clearly representing, seem to have further confused the thought, if we may judge from the variety of interpretations which have been offered. Dr. Anster has managed to present the latter with so much brevity, and at the same time so correctly, in his note on this passage, that I follow the order of his summary, only enlarging it by the introduction of additional views and giving a translation of the phrases he quotes.
Eckermann, after taking home Goethe’s manuscript and
