ABSTRACT

 256. Goethe, in his Dichtung und Wahrheit, relates how in Strasburg he was in constant intercourse with Herder at the time when the latter was engaged in writing his prize essay for the Berlin Academy on the origin of language; and how he read the manuscript, although, as he confesses himself, he was very little prepared to deal with that subject; “I had,” he says, “never bestowed much thought on that kind of thing; I was still too much engrossed by present things (zu sehr in der mitte der dinge befangen) to think about their beginning or end”.