ABSTRACT
Modern democracy is historically nothing more than the form of sovereignty of the bourgeoisie, of the tiers etat, which established its mercantile and industrial world-dominion upon the ruins of feudalism. It was achieved through revolution against the ancient forces of inequality and privilege, of spiritual as well as material oppression. The attitude of Goethe toward the victorious democracy is of the highest personal and objective interest. Living, as he did, from the eighteenth century well into a decisive part of the nineteenth century, he was a deeply disturbed spectator of the governmental convulsions by which political forms spasmodically adjusted themselves to new moral and social conditions. The far-seeing and eager sympathy of the old man for Utopian plans and for great technical problems such as the Panama Canal was simply magnificent. It is impossible not to admire this ready acceptance of life under new conditions in a mentality that had matured to greatness in such a different world.
