194 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



towards that light in which the actual was merged in the 

 ideal. Thus it was that, amid the realities by which he was 

 surrounded, he never met with anything that accorded com- 

 pletely with his ideal. 



Imperious truth impedes free thought, 



Deprives the mind of liberty, 

 Destroys whate'er's by fancy wrought, 



And rends the veil of poetry. 1 



This subjective disposition of mind, greatly intensified by 

 the influence of Kant's philosophy, regarded everything nature, 

 history, and physical enjoyment only as mental impressions. 

 ' Nature only charms and delights us by that with which we have 

 ourselves invested her. The grace in which she clothes her- 

 self is but the reflection of the inner grace in the soul of the 

 beholder, and in our magnanimity we kiss the mirror in which 

 we have been surprised by the sight of our own image.' 



If in the constitution of Schiller's mind we have found the 

 clue to his censure of Humboldt's method of scientific investi- 

 gation, there appears to have been also a special and immediate 

 cause for this strange severity. This lay in the fact that a 

 few weeks previously Humboldt had been working at Jena 

 on his 'Experiments upon the Excitability of the Fibres of 

 the Nerves and Muscles,' in which he completely set aside 

 the explanation of vital force given in the ' Grenius of Ehodes,' 

 thus considerably weakening the confidence hitherto reposed 

 in his scientific investigations (see above pp. 184, 185). 



About this time, on April 18, 1797, Humboldt thus wrote 

 to Freiesleben during a flying visit to Groethe at Weimar : c I 

 have been living since the 1st of March at Jena, entirely among 

 my books, and occupied with chemical experiments and ana- 

 tomy. I have actually returned to my old student-life, for 

 my sphere is limited and exclusively restricted to my own 

 pursuits. As I am industriously preparing myself for a voyage 

 to the West Indies, and intend to devote myself there prin- 



1 * Die Wirklichkeit mit ihren Schranken 



Umlagert den gebundenen Geist, 

 Sie stiirzt die Schopfung der Gedanken, 

 Der Dichtung schoner Flor zerreisst.' 



