us.  Could we, without being morbidly anxious, keep watch over ourselves as to what operates favorably or unfavorably upon us in our complicated civil and social life, and would we leave off what is actually pleasant to us as an enjoyment, for the sake of the evil consequences, we should thus know how to remove with ease many an inconvenience which, with a constitution otherwise sound, often troubles us more than even a disease.  Unfortunately, it is in dietetics as in morals,—­we cannot see into a fault till we have got rid of it; by which nothing is gained, for the next fault is not like the preceding one, and therefore cannot be recognized under the same form.

While I was reading over the letters which had been written to my sister from Leipzig, this remark, among others, could not escape me,—­that, from the very beginning of my academical course, I had esteemed myself very clever and wise, since, as soon as I had learned any thing, I put myself in the place of the professor, and so became didactic on the spot.  I was amused to see how I had immediately applied to my sister whatever Gellert had imparted or advised in his lectures, without seeing, that, both in life and in books, a thing may be proper for a young man without being suitable for a young lady; and we both together made merry over these mimicries.  The poems also which I had composed in Leipzig were already too poor for me; and they seemed to me cold, dry, and, in respect of all that was meant to express the state of the human heart or mind, too superficial.  This induced me, now that I was to leave my father’s house once more, and go to a second university, again to decree a great high auto-da-fe against my labors.  Several commenced plays, some of which had reached the third or the fourth act, while others had only the plot fully made out, together with many other poems, letters, and papers, were given over to the fire:  and scarcely any thing was spared except the manuscript by Behrisch, “Die Laune des Verliebten” and “Die Mitschuldigen,” which latter play I constantly went on improving with peculiar affection; and, as the piece was already complete, I again worked over the plot, to make it more bustling and intelligible.  Lessing, in the first two acts of his “Minna,” had set up an unattainable model of the way in which a drama should be developed; and nothing was to me of greater importance than to thoroughly enter into his meaning and views.

The recital of whatever moved, excited, and occupied me at this time, is already circumstantial enough; but I must nevertheless recur to that interest with which supersensuous things had inspired me, of which I, once for all, so far as might be possible, undertook to form some notion.