16–22 June 1834

What a charm does Wilhelm Meister spread over society, which we were just getting to think odious. And yet, as I read the book to-day and thought of Goethe as the Tag and Jahres Hefte describes him, he seemed to me, — all-sided, gifted, indefatigable student as he is, — to be only another poor monad, after the fashion of his little race bestirring himself immensely to hide his nothingness, spinning his surface di- rectly before the eye to conceal the universe of his ignorance. The finest poems of the world have been expedients to get bread, or else ex- pedients to keep the writer from the mad-house and amuse him and his fellow men with the illu- sion that he knew ; but the greatest passages they have writ, the infinite conclusions to which they owe their fame, are only confessions. Through- out Goethe prevails the undersong of confession and amazement ; the apothegm of Socrates ; the recantation of Man. The first questions are always to be asked, and we fend them ofFby much speaking and many books, so that scarcely can I blame the man who affects to philosophize as some sensualists do, and says his fun is profound calculation. And yet it is best in the poorest view to keep the powers healthy and supple by appropriate action.