e sources,
springs or motives of one's present actions often lie far away beyond
the present time, outside the present circumstances, and altogether
disconnected with the persons with whom one is concerned at the moment
then passing. I have also repeatedly observed in the course of my life
that ties are the faster, the more enduring and the truer the more they
spring from higher, universal, and impersonal sources.

The person who in Mecklenburg stood next above me in position in the
house and in the family was the private tutor, whom I found already
there--a young doctor of philosophy of Goettingen University. We did not
come much into contact on the whole since he as a university graduate
took a far higher stand than I; but through I came into some connection
with the clergymen of the district, and this was of benefit to me. As
for the farmers the bailiffs, etc., their hospitable nature was quite
sufficient of itself to afford me a hearty welcome. Thus I lived in a
way I had for a long time felt I much needed, amidst many-sided
companionable good-fellowship, cheerful and free. Healthy as I was in
body and soul, in head and heart, my thoughts full of brightness and
cheerfulness, it was not long before my mind again felt an eager desire
for higher culture. The young tutor went away, and after his departure
my craving for culture grew keener and keener, for I missed the
intellectual converse I had been able to hold with him. But I was soon
again to receive succour.

The President,[29] besides the family at home, had two sons at the
Paedagogium in Halle.[30] They came to visit their parents, accompanied
by their special tutor, a gentleman destined to become famous later on
as the renowned scholar, Dr. Wollweide.

Dr. Wollweide was a mathematician and a physicist, and I found him
freely communicative. He was so kind as to mention and explain to me the
many various problems he had set before himself to work out. This caused
my long slumbering and suppressed love for mathematics as a science, and
for physics, to spring up again, fully awake. For some time past my
tendency had leaned more and more towards architecture, and, indeed, I
had now firmly determined to choose that as my profession, and to study
it henceforth with all earnestness. My intellectual cravings and the
choice of a profession seemed at last to run together, and I felt
continually bright and happy at the thought. I seized the opportunity of
the presence of