generalizing his perceptions and making his feelings his supreme law.
This is what you have endeavored to do, and what in a great measure
you have already attained. My understanding works more in a
symbolizing method, and thus I hover, as a hybrid, between ideas and
intentions, between law and feeling, between a technical mind and
genius. This it is that, particularly in my earlier years, gave me a
rather awkward appearance both in the field of speculation and in that
of poetry; for the poetic mind generally got the better of me when I
ought to have philosophized, and my philosophical mind when I wished
to poetize. Even now it frequently enough happens that imagination
intrudes upon my abstractions, and cold reason upon my poetical
productions. If I could obtain such mastery over these two powers as
to assign to each its limits, I might yet look forward to a happy
fate; but, alas! just when I have begun to know and to use my moral
powers rightly, illness seizes me and threatens to undermine my
physical powers. I can scarcely hope to have time to complete any
great and general mental revolution in myself; but I will do what I
can, and when, at last, the building falls, I shall, perhaps, after
all, have snatched from the ruins what was most worthy of being
preserved.

You expressed a wish that I should speak of myself, and I have made
use of the permission. I make these confessions to you in
confidence, and venture to hope that you will receive them in a kindly
spirit.

I shall today refrain from entering into details about your essay,
which will at once lead our conversations on this subject upon the
most fertile track. My own researches--entered upon by a different
path--have led me to a result rather similar to that at which you have
arrived, and in the accompanying papers you will perhaps find ideas
which coincide with your own. I wrote them about a year and a half
ago, for which reason, as well as on account of the occasion for which
they were penned (they were intended for an indulgent friend), there
is some excuse for their crudeness of form. These ideas have, indeed,
since then, received in me a better foundation and greater precision,
and this may possibly bring them much nearer to yours.

I cannot sufficiently regret that _Wilhelm Meister_ is lost to our
periodical. However, I hope that your fertile mind and friendly
interest in our undertaking will give us some compensation for this
loss, whereby the admir