After Empedocles, who divined that Eros evolved the worlds from Chaos, metaphysics have not advanced one step.  Only death is a power equally absolute; yet in the eternal struggle between the two, love is the stronger; love conquers death by night and day, conquers it every spring, follows death step by step, throwing fresh grain into the gulf it creates.  People occupied with every-day affairs forget or do not wish to remember that they are love’s servants.  It is strange when we come to think of it that the warrior, the chancellor of state, the cultivator of the soil, the merchant, the banker, in all their efforts, which apparently have nothing to do with love, are merely furthering its ends; that is, they serve the law of nature which bids the man to stretch out his arms for the woman.  A mad paradox it would seem to a Bismarck if he were told that the final and only aim of all his endeavors is to further the love of Hermann and Dorothea.  It seems even to me a paradox; and yet Bismarck’s aim is the consolidation of the German empire, and this can be achieved only through Hermann and Dorothea.  What else, then, has a Bismarck to do but to create by the help of politics and bayonets such conditions that Hermann and Dorothea may love each other in peace, unite in happiness, and bring up new generations?

When at the university I read an Arabian ghazel in which the poet compares the power of love to that of infernal torments.  I forget the name of the poet, but the idea remained in my memory.  Truly, love is the one power that lasts for all times, holds the world together, and creates new worlds.

10 March.

To-day I tore up three or four letters to Aniela.  After dinner, I went into my father’s room to talk with him about my aunt’s plans.  I found him looking through a lens at some epilichnions with the earth still adhering to them, he had received from the Peloponnesus.  How splendid he looked in that light coming through stained windows in the large room full of Etruscan vases, statues more or less mutilated, and all kinds of Greek and Roman treasures.  Among these surroundings his face reminded me of a divine Plato or of some other Greek sage.  When I entered he interrupted his work, listened attentively to what I had to say, and then asked, “Do you hesitate?”

“No, I do not hesitate, but I am reflecting.  I want to know why I want it.”

“Then I will tell you this; I was once like you, inclined to analyze not only my own feelings but all manifestations of life.  When I came to know your mother I lost that faculty at once.  I knew one thing only, that I wanted her, and did not care to know anything else.  Therefore if you have a like powerful desire, marry.  I express myself wrongly, for if you wish it very much you will do it without anybody’s help or advice, and be as happy as I was until your mother died.”

We remained silent for some time.  If I were to apply my father’s words closely to my own case, I should feel small comfort.  I love Aniela, there is no doubt; but I have not arrived yet at a state that precludes all reflection.  But I do not consider this as a bad sign; it simply means that I belong to a generation that has gone a step farther on the way to knowledge.