WEIMAR AND JENA. 189 



ander imposes upon many people and gains much in comparison 

 with his brother William ; he has the gift of the gab, and [er 

 ein Maul hat] can assert his own value. As to absolute worth, 

 I cannot compare the two, for I consider William so much 

 the more deserving of esteem.' l 



In his next letter, dated August 25, Korner, with characteristic 

 delicacy of feeling endeavours to justify his friend and mode- 

 rate Schiller's unfavourable estimate of his character : ' Your 

 opinion of Alexander von Humboldt appears to me to be almost 

 too severe. I have not, indeed, read his work upon the nerves, 

 and know it only by report ; but granted that he be deficient in 

 imagination, and so deprived of entering into the fullest sym- 

 pathy with nature, yet it seems to me he may be able to do 

 much for science. His endeavour to measure and analyse 

 everything arises from his acute powers of observation, and no 

 useful material can be accumulated by the investigator of 

 nature without this faculty. As a mathematician he is not to 

 be blamed for applying number and proportion to everything 

 that comes within the sphere of his operations. By so doing 

 he seeks to form the various materials scattered through nature 

 into a harmonious whole, he values the hypotheses which enlarge 

 his range of view, and is led by them to seek the solution of 

 fresh problems in nature. That the susceptibility of his cha- 

 racter is not equal to his energy, I am ready to admit. Men 

 of this stamp are always too busily occupied in their own 

 sphere of action to take much notice of what goes on in the 

 outer world around them. This gives them the appearance of 

 harshness and heartlessness.' 2 



It may appear superfluous after such a justification for us to 



1 Seldom has such an erroneous and harsh judgment been pronounced by 

 one distinguished man upon another equally distinguished, though in a 

 different sphere. Fichte alone may have experienced something similar 

 from Goethe when obliged to resign his professorship at Jena in 1799, on 

 account of his supposed atheistic principles. At that time Goethe wrote 

 to Schlosser : ' Fichte's foolish presumption has thrown him out of a mode 

 of life which he will not be able to find again all the world over. I fear 

 he ia lost to himself and the world.' And yet the most important and 

 valuable portion of Fichte's life proved to be the years he subsequently 

 spent at Berlin ! 



2 In later years Humboldt thought it necessary to defend himself from 



