’Three or four afternoons I have passed very happily at my beloved haunt in the wood, reading Goethe’s “Second Residence in Rome.”  Your pencil-marks show that you have been before me.  I shut the book each time with an earnest desire to live as he did,—­always to have some engrossing object of pursuit.  I sympathize deeply with a mind in that state.  While mine is being used up by ounces, I wish pailfuls might be poured into it.  I am dejected and uneasy when I see no results from my daily existence, but I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression.’ * *

* * * * *

’I think I am less happy, in many respects, than you, but particularly in this.  You can speak freely to me of all your circumstances and feelings, can you not?  It is not possible for me to be so profoundly frank with any earthly friend.  Thus my heart has no proper home; it only can prefer some of its visiting-places to others; and with deep regret I realize that I have, at length, entered on the concentrating stage of life.  It was not time.  I had been too sadly cramped.  I had not learned enough, and must always remain imperfect.  Enough!  I am glad I have been able to say so much.’

* * * * *

’I have read nothing,—­to signify,—­except Goethe’s “Campagne in Frankreich.”  Have you looked through it, and do you remember his intercourse with the Wertherian Plessing?  That tale pained me exceedingly.  We cry, “help, help,” and there is no help—­in man at least.  How often I have thought, if I could see Goethe, and tell him my state of mind, he would support and guide me!  He would be able to understand; he would show me how to rule circumstances, instead of being ruled by them; and, above all, he would not have been so sure that all would be for the best, without our making an effort to act out the oracles; he would have wished to see me what Nature intended.  But his conduct to Plessing and Ohlenschlager shows that to him, also, an appeal would have been vain.’

’Do you really believe there is anything “all-comprehending” but religion?  Are not these distinctions imaginary?  Must not the philosophy of every mind, or set of minds, be a system suited to guide them, and give a home where they can bring materials among which to accept, reject, and shape at pleasure?  Novalis calls those, who harbor these ideas, “unbelievers;” but hard names make no difference.  He says with disdain, “To such, philosophy is only a system which will spare them the trouble of reflecting.”  Now this is just my case.  I do want a system which shall suffice to my character, and in whose applications I shall have faith.  I do not wish to reflect always, if reflecting must be always about one’s identity, whether “ich” am the true “ich” &c.  I wish to arrive at that point where I can trust myself, and leave