His veneration was therefore carefully weighed and balanced. Nevertheless, a peculiar displeasure had entered into it for some time, and this frequently moved Lindner to reflection. He had always believed that he had a more correct understanding of the heroic than Goethe. He did not think highly of Scaevolas who hold their hands in the fire, Lucretias who run themselves through with a dagger, or Judiths who chop the heads off those who attack their honor—“motifs” Goethe would have found meaningful at any time, though he did not treat them in his own works; indeed Lindner was convinced, despite the authority of the classics, that these men and women, who had committed crimes for their personal convictions, would nowadays belong not on a pedestal but rather in the courtroom. Against their inclination to inflict severe bodily harm he set an “internalized and social” conception of courage. In discourse and in thought, he even went so far as to place a carefully considered entry on the subject into his classbook, or a judiciously pondered reflection on how his housekeeper needed to be chided for being a bit too forward in her zeal, because in pursuit of one’s duty one ought not only to follow one’s own passions but must take the other person’s motives into account. And when he uttered such things, he had the impression of looking back in the well-fitting everyday clothes of a later century on the bombastic moral costume of an earlier one.

The touch of the ridiculous that attended such examples did not escape him, but he called it the laughter of the intellectual rabble; and for this he had two solid reasons. First, he not only maintained that all situations were equally suited to strengthen or weaken human nature, but also that ordinary circumstances were better suited to this than more exalted occasions, since the human inclination to arrogance and vanity is unwittingly encouraged by the shining exercise of virtue, while its inconspicuous everyday exercise consists of pure unseasoned virtue itself. But second, the planned cultivation of a people’s moral heritage (Lindner loved this expression, along with the soldierly concept of Zucht—discipline and breeding—because of the way it evokes both the rustic and the factory-fresh) must not despise “small occasions” for an additional reason, namely that the godless belief advanced by “liberals and freemasons” that great human accomplishments arise as it were from a void, even if that void is called genius, was already at that time falling out of fashion. The sharpened focus of public attention had already caused the “hero,” whom earlier times had portrayed as an arrogant figure, to be recognized as a tireless toiler over details who, if he is to become an explorer, must prepare himself through unremittent diligence in learning; if an athlete, treat his body with the same anxious care as an opera singer training his voice; and as a political rejuvenator of the people, always reiterate the same thing at countless meetings. And of this, Goethe—who all his life had remained a comfortable citizen-aristocrat—had had no idea, but Lindner saw it coming! It was understandable, therefore, that he thought he was protecting Goethe’s better part against his ephemeral aspects when he preferred the considerate and cordial Goethe—qualities the poet possessed in such gratifying measure—to his tragic persona; it could also be argued that it did not happen without reflection when, for no other reason than that he was a pedant, the professor considered himself to be a man threatened by dangerous passions.