anything heterogenous at once puts forth its claws and takes up a state of defence instead of that of scholar-like submission. Both Raphael and Goethe lacked either, wherefore they were great learners and not mere exploiters of those metallic veins which were left as remnants of the shifting history of their ancestors. Raphael vanishes from our sight as student in the midst of the appropriation of that which his great rival denoted as his “nature”: he, the noblest of thieves, daily carried off a portion of it; but before he had filled his own genius with all the genius of Michelangelo he died, and the last series of his works, as the commencement of a new plan of study, is less perfect and good, for the very reason that death interrupted the great student in his most difficult task, and took away the justifying final goal which he had in view.
541
How we should turn to stone.—By slowly, very slowly growing hard like precious stones, and at last lie still: a joy to all eternity.
542
The philosopher and old age—It is not wisely done to wake the evening sit in judgment of the day: for but too often weariness in this case is the judge over power, success and readiness. Also we should practise great caution with regard to old age and its judgment of life,
