itself in me.  When I now glance over the earlier and later, the greater and smaller, artistic emotions which have swayed me, and observe their source and direction, I see that it was with arts (sculpture as well as music) as it was with languages—­I never succeeded in accomplishing the outward acquisition of them:  yet I now feel vividly that I, too, might have been capable of something in art had I had an artistic education.

Further, there came into my hands, during the time of my imprisonment, a bad translation of an abridgment of the Zendavesta.  The discovery [in these ancient Persian Scriptures] of similar life-truths to our own, and yet coupled with a quite separate religious standpoint from ours, aroused my attention, and gave some feeling of universality to my life and thought; this, however, disappeared as quickly as it had come.

By the beginning of the summer term in 1801 I was at length set free from arrest.  I at once left Jena and my academical career, and returned to my father’s house.  I was just nineteen years old.  It was but natural that I should enter my parents’ house with heavy heart, overclouded soul, and oppressed mind.  But spring warmed and awakened all nature once more, and recalled to life, too, my slumbering desire for better things.

As yet I had busied myself but little with German literature, and the names of Schiller, Goethe, Wieland, and the rest I now, for the first time, began to learn.  In this, too, it was with me as in so many other things; any mental influence that came before me I had either to fully interweave with my inner life, or else altogether to forego its acquisition.

With this peculiarity of temperament, I could master only a rather restricted amount of mental material.  My father’s library was once more ransacked.  I found not much that was of any use to me, for it contained chiefly theological works; but I seized with the greatest enjoyment on a book which had come out some ten years before in Gotha, a general view of all the sciences and fine arts in their various ramifications, with a short sketch of the object of the several sciences and of the literature of each department.  The arrangement was based upon the usual division of the faculties, but it served to give me a general outlook, long desired, over the whole of human knowledge, and I was right glad to have found this “Mappe du monde litteraire”—­for that was its title.  I resolved to turn this book to the best advantage I could, and set about putting my resolution into practice.  In order to make a collection of comprehensive extracts of scientific matters from the several periodicals received by my father (who shared for that purpose in a joint subscription with other preachers and educated people), I had already begun a sort of diary.  The form of this journal was shapeless—­everything was put down as it came, one thing after the other; and thereby the use of it all was rendered very inconvenient.  Now, however, I perceived the value of division according to a settled plan, and soon hit upon a scheme of procedure.