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JENNIFER A. HERDT
classes can cultivate only on stage: "A nobleman can and must be someone who
represents by his appearance [scheinen], whereas the burgher simply is [sein],
and when he tries to put on an appearance (literally, ‘to appear’), the effect is
ludicrous or in bad taste. The nobleman should act and achieve, the burgher
must labor and create, developing some of his capabilities in order to be useful”
(HA 7.5.3, 291, E 175). Wilhelm here connects the right to shine, to cultivate
an impressive appearance, with the opportunity to develop a fully-developed
personality. By Book 7 he has learned to be more suspicious of outer appear¬
ances. They still seem to be revealing, as when Werner arrives and marvels
over the change in Wilhelm’s appearance; he now looks positively noble. The
changes seem to extend even to physical characteristics: “Your eyes are more
deep set, your forehead is broader, your nose is more delicate and your mouth
is much more pleasant” (HA 7.8.1, 499, E 306). Werner, in contrast, has become
skinny and bald, and round-shouldered, his voice shrill, his face pale. We hear
echoes here of Lavater’s influential theory of physiognomy (1775), according
to which physical features expressed specific character traits. But it is telling
that it is Werner who draws attention to these features and who sees them as
significant. Even here, his focus is on the economic significance of these exter¬
nal characteristics, their instrumental rather than intrinsic meaning: “With
your figure you should be able to get me a rich heiress” (HA 7.8.1, 499, E 306,
translation modified). Wilhelm, in the meantime, has acquired the shining
appearance he longed for, but he now more clearly sees that it is not this that
guarantees the capacity to find beauty and goodness only in the truly beautiful
and good, any more than membership in the hereditary nobility guarantees
the possession of true virtue.
With this we approach the matter of the Tower Society’s employment of
ritual, like theater — a matter of appearance, of Schein. On the one hand,
Goethe uses the Society as a mouthpiece for his own philosophy of ethical
formation. On the other hand, he treats the Society and its efforts with a light
irony that invites the reader to further test and probe that philosophy, rather
than simply taking it as authoritative. Within Wilhelm Meister, the Society
is a way of grappling with the role that external guiding forces or authorities
can take when the very notions of external providence and external authority,
and certainly of traditional religious authorities, are problematized in favor of
organic, internal teleology. But the Tower Society is portrayed as itself a work
in progress, as continually reinventing itself, in process of continual change
even as it seeks to influence the development of individuals under its survey.
This extends to its use of ritual.
At the key moment when the Tower Society decides to reveal itself to Wil¬
helm, it does so by summoning him up to the tower of Lothario’s castle, in a
space rendered mysterious and unfamiliar through the presence of darkness,
tapestries, a cloth-covered table “instead of an altar,” and figures who appear
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