At the end of April 1805, with peace in my heart, cheerfulness in my soul, an eager disposition, and a mind full of energy, I quitted my old surroundings.  The first days of an unusually lovely May (and I might here again recall what I pointed out above, that my inner and personal life invariably went familiarly hand in hand with external Nature) I spent with a friend, as a holiday, in the best sense of the word.  This was a dear friend of mine, who lived on an exceedingly finely-situated farm in the Uckermark.[35] Art had improved the beauty of the somewhat simple natural features of the place, in the most cunningly-devised fashion.  In this beautiful, retired, and even solitary spot, I flitted, as it were, from one flower to another like a very butterfly.  I had always passionately loved Nature in her adornments of colour and of dewy pearls, and clung to her closely with the gladsomeness of youth.  Here I made the discovery that a landscape which we look upon in sympathetic mood shines with enhanced brilliancy; or as I put the truth into words at the time, “The more intimately we attach ourselves to Nature, the more she glows with beauty and returns us all our affection.”  This was the first time my mind had ventured to give expression to a sentiment which thrilled my soul.  Often in later life has this phrase proved itself a very truth to me.  My friend one day begged me to write something in his album:  I did so unwillingly.  To write anything borrowed went against me, for it jarred with the relations existing between me and the book’s owner; and to think of anything original was a task I felt to be almost beyond my powers.  However, after long thinking it over in the open air, comparing my friend’s life and my own in all their aspects, I decided upon the following phrase:—­“To thee may destiny soon grant a settled home and a loving wife!  To me, while she drives me restless abroad, may she leave but just so much time as to allow me fairly to discern my relations with my inmost self and with the world.”  Then my thoughts grew clear, and I continued, “Thou givest man bread; let my aim be to give man himself.”

I did not even then fully apprehend the meaning of what I had said and written, or I could not of course have held so firmly to my architecture scheme.  I knew as yet neither myself nor my real life, neither my goal nor my life’s path thither.  And long afterwards, when I had for some time been engaged upon my true vocation, I was not a little astonished over the prophetic nature of this album-phrase of mine.

In later life I have often observed that a man’s spirit, when it first begins to stir within him, utters many a far-away prophetic thought, which yet, in riper age, attains its realisation, its consummation.  I have especially noticed this recently in bright-minded and active children; in fact, I have often been quite astounded at the really deep truths expressed by them in their butterfly life.  I seemed to catch glimpses of a symbolic truth in this; as if indeed the human soul were even already beginning to shake itself free from its chrysalis-wrapping, or were bursting off the last fragments of the eggshell.