ter
and general views of life appealed to what was deepest in his own
nature. Salzmann's belief that "the most useful man is the best," may
be said, indeed, to sum up Goethe's own maturest conviction regarding
the conduct of life. In his relations to Salzmann, therefore, so far
as Goethe's ethical and religious ideals are concerned, we have the
clearest light thrown on his Strassburg period. As described by Goethe
himself, Salzmann was a man of the world, characterised by a tact,
good sense, and personal dignity which gave him an undisputed
ascendancy over the miscellaneous company which met at the common
table. From another member of the circle[70] we have this additional
tribute to Salzmann's high character: "His place (at table) was the
uppermost, and that would have been his natural place, even had he sat
behind the door. His modesty does not permit me to pass a panegyric on
him.... Let my readers imagine a philosophy, based at once on feeling
and a thorough grasp of principles, conjoined with the most genuine
Christianity, and he will have an idea of a Salzmann." Goethe and he,
the same writer adds, were "the most cordial friends (_Herzensfreunde_)."
In Leipzig the cynical _roue_ Behrisch had been Goethe's mentor; in
Strassburg his mentor was Salzmann, and the fact emphasises all the
difference between Goethe's Leipzig and Strassburg days. That he chose
Salzmann as his chiefest friend and confidant at a period when
self-control was still far from his reach, is the proof that _des
Lebens ernstes Fuehren_--the strenuous conduct of life--was in reality,
as he himself claimed, an imperative instinct of his nature. Certainly
he did not regulate his life in Strassburg in accordance with the
maxim of his self-chosen counsellor, yet we may conjecture that but
for Salzmann's restraining influence he would have gone further and
faster than he actually did. In the extremity of what was to be his
most passionate experience in Strassburg, it was to Salzmann that he
poured forth all the tumult of his passion, and the very act of laying
bare his heart to such a counsellor was a suggestion of the necessity
of a certain measure of self-control. In connection with Goethe's
relations to Salzmann we have also to note what is true of his
relations to everyone at whose feet he chose for the time to sit. When
a youth of eighteen he had written to Behrisch, a man of thirty, on
terms of perfect equality. He was now a little over twenty, and