122 Humboldt's Letters. 



HUMBOLDT TO YARNHAGEN. 



BERLIN, March 21st, 1842. 



MY dear friend, so happily restored to me ! It is a 

 source of infinite joy to me to learn, from your exquisite 

 letter, that the really very delightful society at the Prin- 

 cess's has benefited you physically, and, therefore, as I 

 should say in my criminal materialism, mentally also. 

 Such a society, blown together chiefly from the same 

 fashionable world of Berlin (somewhat flat and stale), 

 immediately takes a new shape in the house of Princess 

 Pueckler. It is like the spirit which should breathe 

 life into the state ; the material seems ennobled. 



I still retain your " Christliche Glaubenslehre,"* I 

 who long ago, in Potsdam, was so delighted with 

 Strauss's Life of the Saviour. One learns from it, not 

 only what he does not believe, which is less new to me, 

 but rather what kind of things have been believed and 

 taught by those black coats (parsons) who know how to 



* A celebrated work on the Christian Dogma by Friedrich David 

 Strauss. TV. 



