"[185]
"What hours! what days," wrote Fritz immediately after their parting,
"thou soughtest me about midnight in the darkness; it was as if a new
soul were born within me. From that moment I could not let thee
go."[186] Neither, in the ecstasy of these moments, dreamt that at a
later day Spinoza, who was now their strongest bond of union, was to
be the main cause of their estrangement. For Jacobi Spinoza became the
"atheist," to be reprobated as one of the world's false prophets;
while for Goethe he remained to the end the man to whom God had been
nearest and to whom He had been most fully revealed.
[Footnote 185: As Goethe at this time knew little of Spinoza's
philosophy, it was probably on Spinoza's personal character that he
enlarged. On this theme, we have seen, he had discoursed with
Lavater.]
[Footnote 186: Biedermann, _op. cit._ i. 45.]
Shortly after parting with Goethe, Fritz Jacobi communicated his
impression of him to Wieland in the following words: "The more I think
of it, the more intensely I realise the impossibility of conveying to
one who has not seen or heard Goethe any intelligible notion of this
extraordinary creation of God.
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