this spiritual and intellectual
transformation which Goethe avouches that he underwent there should be
so little evidence either in his contemporary correspondence or in the
conduct of his own life. In his letters of the period to which he
refers he frequently names the authors with whom he happened to be
engaged, but Spinoza he mentions only once, and certainly not in terms
which confirm his later testimony. In a letter to a correspondent who
had lent him a work of Spinoza we have these casual words: "May I keep
it a little longer? I will only see how far I may follow the fellow
(_Menschen_) in his subterranean borings." Whether he actually carried
out his intention, or what impression the reading of the book made
upon him, we are nowhere told, though, if the impression had been as
profound as his Autobiography suggests, we should naturally have
expected some hint of it. In his _Prometheus_, indeed, as we have
seen, there are suggestions of Spinozistic pantheism, but these may
easily have been derived from other sources, and, moreover, in the
passage quoted, the pantheistic conceptions of Spinoza are not
specifically emphasised. We know, also, that in preparing his thesis
for the Doctorate of Laws he had consulted Spinoza's _Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus_, and the scathing criticism on the perversions
of the teaching of Christ in that treatise may have suggested certain
passages in a poem presently to be noted.[172] Yet, so far as his own
contemporary testimony goes, we are led to conclude that in his
retrospect he has assigned to an earlier period experiences which were
of gradual growth, and which only at a later date were realised with
the vividness he ascribes to them. If we turn to his actual life
during the same period, it is equally hard to trace in it the results
of the tranquillising influence which he ascribes to Spinoza. As we
have seen him, he was in mind distracted by uncertainty regarding the
special function for which nature intended him; and in his affections
the victim of emotions which by their very nature could not receive
their full gratification. Nor can we say that his relations to his
father, to Kestner, or Brentano were characterised by that
"disinterestedness" which he claims to have attained from his study of
Spinoza. As we shall presently see, Goethe was so far accurate in his
retrospect that at the period before us he was already attracted by
the figure of Spinoza, but it was not till many y