dominant interest. He identified himself with Christianity, but it
was a Christianity understood by him in the most liberal sense, a
Christianity free from dogma, a spirit rather than a creed. As
kindred to religion, poetry in his conception was inseparable from it
in the essential being of man--poetry not as expressed in conventional
forms but as the breath of the human spirit, and one of the most
precious gifts for the purifying and elevation of humanity. These
conceptions he owed, not to Kant, to whom he had listened in
Koenigsberg, but to a less systematic teacher, J.G. Hamann, whose
eccentric character and visionary speculations had gained for him the
designation of the "Magus of the North." Goethe came to be acquainted
with the writings of Hamann, and had a genuine admiration of him as a
seer struggling with visions to which he was unable to give adequate
utterance.[75] It was in his conversations with Herder, however, that
he was introduced to those deeper conceptions of man and his
possibilities which implied a complete emancipation from the
mechanical philosophy which he had hitherto been endeavouring to find
in a mystical religion.

[Footnote 74: R. Haym, Herder's biographer, says of him: "Einen
unbedingt erfreulichen, harmonischen Eindruck kann dieser Mann, der
selbst von den 'graeulichen Dissonanzen' redet, in die Aeussererungen
zuweilen ausklingen moechten, auch auf den guenstigst gestimmten
Betrachter nimmermehr machen." (_Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen
Werken_, Berlin, 1887, i. p. 396.)]

[Footnote 75: Goethe attached so much importance to many of Hamann's
utterances that, as late as 1806, he had thoughts of bringing out an
edition of Hamann's works.]

During the six months that Herder resided in Strassburg he was under
treatment for a serious ailment of his eyes, and Goethe was assiduous
in his attendance on him, often remaining with him for whole days.
Their intercourse was not an unmixed pleasure for either. Herder's
mordant humour and spirit of contradiction were a daily trial to
Goethe's temper, and he describes his feelings of alternating
attraction and repulsion as a wholly new experience in his life.
Herder, who had known Diderot and D'Alembert and Lessing, appears,
indeed, to have treated Goethe as an undisciplined boy, spoilt by
flattery, with no serious purpose in life, inconsequent and
irresponsible.[76] Nor does he seem to have been specially impressed
by any promise in the youth who