y and partly out of sympathy with his new friends,
Goethe now betook himself to occult studies, and, in imitation of the
Fraeulein von Klettenberg, had a room fitted up with the necessary
chemical apparatus. It was the first practical commencement of those
scientific studies which were subsequently to occupy such a large part
of his life. Along with his chemical experiments went the study of
such visionaries in science as Paracelsus, Van Helmont, and others,
but also of the great Boerhaave, whose _Institutes of Medicine and
Aphorisms_, containing all that was then known of medical theory, he
"gladly stamped on his mind and memory."

To what extent are we to infer that Goethe really shared the religious
views of the circle of pious persons with whom he was now living in
daily contact? His own account we can only regard as half jesting,
half serious. He would never have spiritual peace, Fraeulein von
Klettenberg told him till he had a "reconciled God." Goethe's
rejoinder was that it should be put the other way. Considering his
recent sufferings and his own good intentions, it was God who was in
arrears to him and who had something to be forgiven. The Fraeulein
charitably condoned the blasphemy, but she and her fellow-believers
were assuredly in the right when they denied the blasphemer the name
of _Christian_. Yet, as has been said, Goethe in his own way was
seriously in search of a faith that would satisfy both his intellect
and his heart, and he even attempted to construct one. A book that
fell into his hands, Gottfried Arnold's _Impartial History of the
Church and of Heretics_,[52] prompted the attempt. From this book, he
tells us, he received a favourable impression of heretics, and the
impression was comforting to one who, like himself, was looked on as a
heretic by all his friends. Moreover, he had often heard it said that
in the long run every man must have his own religion; why, therefore,
should he not essay to think out a creed that would at least satisfy
himself? In brief outline he has described the system which he evolved
from his miscellaneous historical and scientific studies. It is, as he
himself says, a strange composite of Neo-Platonism, and of hermetical,
mystical, and cabbalistical speculations, all leading by a necessary
logic to the dogmas of Redemption and the Incarnation--a conclusion
which at least points to the fact that for Goethe at this time
Christianity was a religion specifically predestined