Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 4.djvu/405

Rh this most beautiful mineral fluidity, which, to my greatest astonishment, had sometimes appeared in the form of an animal jelly, always deposited a powder, which I was forced to pronounce the finest flint dust, but which gave not the least sign of anything productive in its nature from which one could have hoped to see this maiden earth pass into the maternal state.

Strange and unconnected as these operations were, I yet learned many things from them. I paid strict attention to all the crystallisations that might occur, and became acquainted with the external forms of many natural things: and, inasmuch as I well knew that in modern times chemical subjects were treated more methodically, I wished to get a general conception of them; although, as a half adept, I had very little respect for the apothecaries and all those who operated with common fire. However, the chemical "Compendium" of Boerhaave attracted me powerfully, and led me on to read several of his writings, in which (since, moreover, my tedious illness had inclined me toward medical subjects) I found an inducement to study also the "Aphorisms" of this excellent man, which I was glad to stamp upon my mind and in my memory.

Another employment, somewhat more human, and by far more useful for my cultivation at the moment, was reading through the letters which I had written home from Leipzig. Nothing reveals more with respect to ourselves, than when we again see before us that which has proceeded from us years before, so that we can now consider ourselves as an object of contemplation. But, of course, I was as yet too young, and the epoch which was represented by those papers was still too near. As in our younger years we do not in general easily cast off a certain self-complacent conceit, this especially shows itself in despising what we have been but a little time before; for while, indeed, we per-