was a brand to be plucked from the burning, and, born proselytiser as
he was, he even made the attempt to convert Goethe to his own views of
ultimate salvation. In response to his appeal Goethe wrote a letter
which should have convinced Lavater that he was dealing with a son of
Adam with the ineradicable instincts of the natural man.[177] "Thank
you, dear brother," he wrote, "for your ardour regarding your
brother's eternal happiness. Believe me, the time will come when we
shall understand each other. You hold converse with me as with an
unbeliever--one who insists on understanding, on having proofs, who
has not been schooled by experience. And the contrary of all this is
my real feeling. Am I not more resigned in the matter of understanding
and proving than yourself? Perhaps I am foolish in not giving you the
pleasure of expressing myself in your language, and in not showing to
you by laying bare my deepest experiences that I am a man and
therefore cannot feel otherwise than other men, and that all the
apparent contradiction between us is only strife of words which arises
from the fact that I realise things under other combinations than you,
and that in expressing their relativity I must call them by other
names; and this has from the beginning been the source of all
controversies, and will be to the end. And you will be for ever
plaguing me with evidences! And to what end? Do I require evidence
that I exist? evidence that I feel? I treasure, cherish, and revere
only such evidences as prove to me that thousands, or even one, have
felt that which strengthens and consoles me. And, therefore, the word
of man is for me the word of God, whether by parsons or prostitutes
it has been brought together, enrolled in the canon, or flung as
fragments to the winds. And with my innermost soul I fall as a brother
on the neck of Moses! Prophet! Evangelist! Apostle! Spinoza or
Machiavelli! But to each I am permitted to say: 'Dear friend, it is
with you as it is with me; in the particular you feel yourself grand
and mighty, but the whole goes as little into your head as into
mine.'"

[Footnote 177: The letter is addressed to Heinrich Pfenninger, an
engraver in Zurich, who engraved some of the plates in Lavater's book
on Physiognomy.--_Werke, Briefe_, Band ii. pp. 155-6.]

On June 23rd Lavater arrived in Frankfort, where during four days he
was entertained as a guest in the Goethe household. The news of his
coming had created a lively