Yet in Lavater's eyes Goethe
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.
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