for man's
salvation. "We all become mystics in old age," is a remark of his own
at that period of life; and the conclusion of the Second Part of
Faust, as well as other indications, proves that the remark was at
least true of himself. But, as has often been pointed out, not only in
old age, but at every period of his life, there was a mystic strain in
him which was only kept in check by what was the strongest instinct of
his nature--the instinct that demanded the direct vision of the
concrete fact as the only condition on which he could build "the
pyramid of his life."

[Footnote 52: Probably Goethe had this book in his mind when he wrote
the sarcastic epigram:--

"Es ist die ganze Kirchengeschichte
Mischmasch von Irrthum und von Gewalt."]

Goethe's experience derived from his intercourse with Fraeulein von
Klettenberg and her friends undoubtedly enriched his own nature and
enlarged his conceptions of the content of human life, of its possible
motives and ideals. It was not a circle into which his own affinities
would have led him, but being in it, he, as was his invariable habit,
drew from it to the full all that it could give for his own
building-up. And in enriching his own nature and widening his outlook,
the experience enlarged the scope of his creative productiveness. But
for his intercourse with these pious enthusiasts the Confessions of a
Beautiful Soul would not have found a place in _Wilhelm Meister_, and
from the general picture of human life and its activities which it is
the object of that book to present, there would have been lacking one
conception of life and its responsibilities, not the least interesting
in the history of the human spirit. Most specific and important of all
his gains from his association with the Frankfort community, however,
was that from it directly emerged what is universally regarded as his
greatest creative effort--the First Part of Faust. The conception of
that work was closely associated with the chemical experiments and
cabbalistic studies suggested by his intercourse with Fraeulein von
Klettenberg and her circle, and not only suggested but carried out on
the foundation that had thus been laid.[53]

[Footnote 53: Yet at a later date he would seem to have regarded his
mystical studies as among the errors of his youth. In his _Tagebuch_,
under date August 7th, 1779, he writes as follows, and the passage may
be taken as a commentary on the whole period of his life