My Apprenticeship: the Shape of a Life

Abstract

In the Introduction to My Apprenticeship, Beatrice Webb writes that beneath the surface of daily existence, her life had been determined by an opposition, a ‘continuous controversy between an Ego that affirms and an Ego that denies’. With this phrase she signals an entry into the familiar world of Victorian dichotomies, into a private world of her own that normally remained hidden from public scrutiny, and into a world that bore the mark of Goethe’s influence. Her words echo Faust — ‘der Geist der stets verneint’ — and reflect the Goethe of Carlyle, the Goethe that was perceived as part Saint and part Sceptic.

How can a man learn to know himself? by reflection never — only by action. In the measure that thou seekest to do thy duty shalt thou know what is in thee. But what is thy duty? The demand of the hour.

Goethe