SOURCE: Goldsmith, Robert E. “The Early Development of Wilhelm von Humboldt.” Germanic Review 42, no. 1 (January 1967): 30-48.

In the following essay, Goldsmith discusses the resulting intellectual effects of Humboldt's decision to resign from government service via an examination of Humboldt's letters to his wife.

“Unbegreiflich ist mir noch der Gang, den ich nehmen mußte, um so anders zu werden …”¹

Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1791 prepared to resign his position in the Berlin Kammergericht and, rejecting the career and mode of life for which he had been educated, set out in pursuit of an ideal he vaguely felt but could not really define. This ideal, seen as the goal of all human existence, received its first full expression in 1792 after Humboldt had enjoyed the beneficent isolation he had sought.

“Der wahre Zweck des Menschen—nicht der, welchen die wechselnde Neigung, sondern welchen die ewig unveränderliche Vernunft ihm vorschreibt—ist...