ears later that a
close acquaintance with Spinoza's writings resulted in that
indebtedness to which he gave expression when he said that, with
Linnaeus and Shakespeare, the Jewish thinker was one of the great
formative influences in his development.

[Footnote 172: An entry in his _Ephemerides_, the diary which he kept
in his 21st year (see above, p. 102), shows that Spinoza's philosophy,
as he conceived it, was then repugnant to him. The passage is as
follows: "Testimonio enim mihi est virorum tantorum sententia, rectae
rationi quam convenientissimum fuisse systema emanativum (he is
thinking specially of Giordano Bruno); licet nulli subscribere velim
sectae, valdeque doleam Spinozismum, teterrimis erroribus ex eodem
fonte manantibus, doctrinae huic purissimae, iniquissimum fratrem
natum esse."--Max Morris, _op. cit._ ii. 33.]

To the same period to which Goethe assigns his transformation by
Spinoza he also assigns the original conception of a work in which
Spinoza was, at least, to find a place. As has been said, there are
passages in the fragments of this poem that were actually written
which may have been suggested by the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_
of Spinoza, but the general tone and tendency of the fragments are
equally remote from the temper and the contemplations of the Spinoza
whom the world knows. The dominant note of _Der Ewige Jude_, as the
fragments are designated, is, indeed, suggestive, not of Spinoza,
but of him who may already have been in embryo in Goethe's
mind--Mephistopheles. Mephistophelian is the ironical presentment in
_Der Ewige Jude_ of the follies, the delusions of man in his highest
aspirations.

Near the close of his life it was said of Goethe that the world would
come to believe that there had been not one but many Goethes,[173] and
the contrast between the author of _Werther_ and the author of _Der
Ewige Jude_ is an interesting commentary on the remark. Yet the
subject of the abortive poem, as we have it--the perversions of
Christianity in its historical development--was not a new interest for
him. During his illness after his return from Leipzig he had, as we
saw, assiduously read Arnold's _History of Heretics_,[174] with the
result that he excogitated a religious system for himself. His two
contributions to the short-lived Review also show that religion,
doctrinal and historical, was still a living interest for him.
Moreover, as was usually the case with all his creative efforts