He had not come this far with any philosopher, not even with Jacobi, who had been closest to him. He had always felt as if they were talking across a divide. The immediate life which he found among great poets and mystics, which he sought to portray in his poems, of which he spoke as something of a mystery, had treated some as the dreams of his poetry, and did not want to know it. Here was a philosopher who understood him; not in unsure outlines, or mixed with foreign and murky mixtures, but in solid forms he found his thoughts again. It was the inner consanguinity of religion, of philosophy, of art, to which he had always believed, and which had appeared to him in other systems in abstract antagonism, in hostile separation. His forebodings became lawful, and the modes of thought were filled with real content. Now philosophy was neither a mere gymnastics of thought, nor a constructing and creation of God. All came into a new context, he learned in the true sense of the word.
Hitherto he had lived in an instinctive state, and had withstood the impression of art and the beautiful, without having the philosophical need to be clear about its nature. What it was in itself, what it had in it, was indiscriminately one to him; he took one for the other. From this source many things had sprung from his fantasies and poetry.
