Her education was meagre--a defect which her
conscientious husband did his best to amend; and all her
characteristics were fitted rather to evoke affection than to inspire
respect. Though her son always speaks of her with tender regard, his
tone is that of an elder brother to a sister rather than of a son to a
parent. She was herself conscious of her incompetence to discharge all
the responsibilities of a mother which the character of the father
made specially onerous. "We were young together," she said of herself
and her son, and she confessed frankly that "she could educate no
child." Thus between an unsympathetic father and a mother incapable of
influencing the deeper springs of character, Goethe passed through
childhood and boyhood without the discipline of temper and will which
only the home can give. And the lack of this discipline is traceable
in all his actions till he had reached middle life. Wayward and
impulsive by nature, he yielded to every motive, whether prompted by
the intellect or the heart, with an abandonment which struck his
friends as the leading trait of his character. "Goethe," wrote one of
them, "only follows his last notion, without troubling himself as to
consequences," and of himself, when he was past his thirtieth year, he
said that he was "as much a child as ever.
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