orced profession! That is contrary to all my instincts. So
far as I can, and so long as the humour lasts, I will carry out in a
playful fashion what comes in my way. So I unconsciously trifled in my
youth; so will I consciously continue to do to the end."[18] The step
he now took is a curious illustration of the solemn self-importance
which was one of his characteristics as a youth. To the professor of
history and law of all people he chose to announce his intention of
studying _belles lettres_ instead of jurisprudence. The professor
sensibly pointed out to him the folly and impropriety of his conduct
in view of his father's wishes; and his counsels, seconded by the
friendly advice of his wife, Frau Boehme, turned the youthful aspirant
from his purpose for a time. On his own testimony he now became a
model student, and was "as happy as a bird in a wood." He heard
lectures on German history from Boehme, though history was distasteful
to him at every period of his life; lectures on literature from the
popular Gellert, on style from Professor Clodius, and on physics,
logic, and philosophy from other professors.

[Footnote 18: _Gespraeche mit Riemer_, Anfang 1807.]

But alike by temperament and previous training, Goethe was indisposed
to profit by professorial prelections, however admirable. He had
brought with him to the university a store of miscellaneous
information which deprived them of the novelty they might have for the
average listener. "Application," he says, moreover, "was not my
talent, since nothing gave me any pleasure except what came to me of
itself." So it was that by the close of his first semester his
attendance at lectures became a jest, and the professors the butt of
his wit. It was characteristic that he found the prelections on
philosophy and logic specially tedious and distasteful. Of God and the
world he thought he knew as much as his teacher, and the scholastic
analysis of the processes of thought seemed to him only the deadening
of the faculties which he had received from nature. Of these dreary
hours in the lecture-rooms the biting comments of Faust and
Mephistopheles on university studies in general are the lively
reminiscence.

But while he was putting in a perfunctory attendance at lectures, his
education was proceeding in another school--the school which, as in
his after years he so insistently testified, affords the only real
discipline for life--the world of real men and women.[19] And th