permission to return to his home and to his former calling.  Upon my entrance into a corps of Prussian soldiers I had received, through the influence of some good friends, the promise of a post under the Prussian Government—­namely, that of assistant at the mineralogical museum of Berlin, under Weiss.  Thither then, as the next place of my destined work, I turned my steps.  I desired also to see the Rhine and the Main, and my birthplace as well; so I went by Dusseldorf back to Luenen, and thence by Mainz, Frankfurt, and Rudolstadt to Berlin.

Thus I had lived through the whole campaign according to my strength, greater or less, in a steady inner struggle towards unity and harmony of life, but what of outward significance and worth recollection had I received from the soldier’s life?  I left the army and the warlike career with a total feeling of discontent.  My inner yearning for unity and harmony, for inward peace, was so powerful that it shaped itself unconsciously into symbolical form and figure.  In a ceaseless, inexplicable, anxious state of longing and unrest, I had passed through many pretty places and many gardens on my homeward way, without any of them pleasing me.  In this mood I reached F——­, and entered a fairly large and handsomely-stocked flower garden.  I gazed at all the vigorous plants and fresh gay flowers it offered me, but no flower took my fancy.  As I passed all the many varied beauties of the garden in review before my mind, it fell upon me suddenly that I missed the lily.  I asked the owner of the garden if he had no lilies there, and he quietly replied, No!  When I expressed my surprise, I was answered as quietly as before that hitherto no one had missed the lily.  It was thus that I came to know what I missed and longed for.  How could my inner nature have expressed itself more beautifully in words?  “Thou art seeking silent peacefulness of heart, harmony of life, clear purity of soul, by the symbol of this silent, pure, simple lily.”  That garden, in its beautiful variety, but without a lily, appeared to me as a gay life passed through and squandered without unity and harmony.  Another day I saw many lovely lilies blooming in the garden of a house in the country.  Great was my joy; but, alas! they were separated from me by a hedge.  Later on I solved this symbol also; and until its solution image and longing remained stored in my memory.  One thing I ought to notice—­namely, that in the place where I was vainly seeking for lilies in the garden a little boy of three years old came up trustfully and stood by my side.

I hastened to the scene of my new duties.  How variously the different outward circumstances of my life henceforth affected me as to the life within, now that this had won for itself once more an assured individual form, and how my life again resumed its true and highest aspect, I must pass over here, since to develop these considerations with all their connections would take me too long.