That marvellous saying, 'Whoso truly loves God must
not desire God to love him in return,' with all the premises on which
it rests and the consequences that flow from it, permeated my whole
thinking. To be disinterested in everything, and most of all in love
and friendship, was my highest desire, my maxim, my constant practice;
so that that bold saying of mine at a later date, 'If I love Thee,
what is that to Thee?' came directly from my heart."[171]
[Footnote 171: Saying of Philine in _Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre_, bk.
iv. ch. ix.]
What is surprising is that of this spiritual and intellectual
transformation which Goethe avouches that he underwent there should be
so little evidence either in his contemporary correspondence or in the
conduct of his own life. In his letters of the period to which he
refers he frequently names the authors with whom he happened to be
engaged, but Spinoza he mentions only once, and certainly not in terms
which confirm his later testimony. In a letter to a correspondent who
had lent him a work of Spinoza we have these casual words: "May I keep
it a little longer? I will only see how far I may follow the fellow
(_Menschen_) in his subterranean borings.
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