y afford a foundation
for nothing. Nay, they have been of the greatest injury, since they have
confused men and robbed them of their needful support.

"After all, what do we know, and how far can we go with all our wit?

"Man is born not to solve the problems of the universe, but to find out
where the problem begins, and then to restrain himself within the limits
of the comprehensible.

"His faculties are not sufficient to measure the actions of the
universe; and an attempt to explain the outer world by reason is, with
his narrow point of view, but a vain endeavor. The reason of man and the
reason of the Deity are two very different things.

"If we grant freedom to man, there is an end to the omniscience of God;
for if the Divinity knows how I shall act, I must act so perforce. I
give this merely as a sign how little we know, and to show that it is
not good to meddle with divine mysteries.

"Moreover, we should only utter higher maxims so far as they can benefit
the world. The rest we should keep within ourselves, and they will
diffuse over our actions a lustre like the mild radiance of a hidden
sun."

_Sunday, December_ 25.--"I have of late made an observation, which I
will impart to you.

"Everything we do has a result. But that which is right and prudent does
not always lead to good, nor the contrary to what is bad; frequently the
reverse takes place. Some time since, I made a mistake in one of these
transactions with booksellers, and was sorry that I had done so. But now
circumstances have so altered, that, if I had not made that very
mistake, I should have made a greater one. Such instances occur
frequently in life, and hence we see men of the world, who know this,
going to work with great freedom and boldness."

I was struck by this remark, which was new to me.

I then turned the conversation to some of his works, and we came to the
elegy _Alexis and Dora_.

"In this poem," said Goethe, "people have blamed the strong, passionate
conclusion, and would have liked the elegy to end gently and peacefully,
without that outbreak of jealousy; but I could not see that they were
right. Jealousy is so manifestly an ingredient of the affair, that the
poem would be incomplete if it were not introduced at all. I myself knew
a young man who, in the midst of his impassioned love for an easily-won
maiden, cried out, 'But would she not act to another as she has acted to
me?'"

I agreed entirely with Goethe, and then m