onship, and
strangeness.

I have been highly grateful to your brother, for whom I find no epithet,
for several hours of frank, friendly conversation; for although
assimilation of his theory of geology, and practical work in accordance
with it, are impossible for my mental process, yet I have seen with true
sympathy and admiration how that of which I cannot convince myself in
him obtains a logical coherence and is amalgamated with the tremendous
mass of his knowledge, where it is then held together by his priceless
character.

If I may express myself with my old frankness, my most honored friend, I
gladly admit that in my advanced years everything becomes more and more
historical to me. Whether a thing has happened in days gone by, in
distant realms, or very close to myself, is quite immaterial; I even
seem to become more and more historical to myself; and when, in the
evening, Plutarch is read to me, I often appear ridiculous to myself,
should I narrate my biography in this way.

Forgive me expressions of this character! In old age men become
garrulous, and since I dictate, it is very easy for this natural
tendency to get the better of me.

Of my _Faust_ there is much and little to say; at a peculiarly happy
time the apothegm occurred to me:

"If bards ye are, as ye maintain;
Now let your inspiration show it."

And through a mysterious psychological turn, which probably deserves
investigation, I believe that I have risen to a type of production which
with entire consciousness has brought forth that which I myself still
approve of--though perhaps without being able ever again to swim in this
current--but which Aristotle and other prose-writers would even ascribe
to a sort of madness. The difficulty of succeeding consisted in the fact
that the second part of _Faust_--to whose printed portions you have
possibly devoted some attention--has been pondered for fifty years in
its ends and aims, and has been elaborated in fragmentary fashion, as
one or the other situation occurred to me; but the whole has remained
incomplete.

Now, the second part of _Faust_ demands more of the understanding than
the first does, and therefore it was necessary to prepare the reader,
even though he must still supply bridges. The filling of certain gaps
was obligatory both for historical and for aesthetic unity, and this I
continued until at last I deemed it advisable to cry:

"Close ye the wat'ring canal; to their fill have the mead