Sophie's bright, hospitable home presented a striking contrast to young Hardenberg's own; he was fascinated (as was his elder brother) by the whole family; and the young girl, who, had she lived, would perhaps have disappointed him by turning out worldly or insignificant, became his muse, his Beatrice, his ideal. When we remember that, almost at the same time with Sophie, Hardenberg lost his brother Erasmus, to whom he was united by an intimate and beautiful friendship, we cannot think it strange that life should have seemed to him to have lost all its charms. He regarded death not merely in the light of a release; his mystical tendency led him, as already mentioned, to speak of it as "a free-will offering." He wrote in his diary at this time: "My death will be a proof of my understanding and appreciation of what is highest; it will be a real sacrifice, not a flight nor a makeshift." It is at this crisis that he begins to turn in the direction of positive Christianity. Not that he dreamed of declaring allegiance to any particular Church, or belief in any particular set of dogmas, but his pagan longing for death assumed a Christian colouring. His inmost spiritual life had long been of such a nature that, had it not been for the influence of the spirit of the times, he might just as easily have become a determined opponent of all ecclesiastical doctrine. His state of mind seems to have been that indicated by Friedrich Schlegel when he wrote to him a year later: "Possibly you still have the choice, my friend, between being the last Christian, the Brutus of the old religion, or the Christ of the new gospel." Shortly after this his choice was made. In December 1798 he still feels, when he compares himself with his friend Just, that he is only the apostle of pure spirituality. He does not, like Just, rely "with childlike mind upon the unalterable words of a mysterious ancient document;" he will not be bound by the letter, and is inclined to find his own way to the primeval world; in the doctrines of Christianity he sees an emblematic pre-figurement of the coming universal religion. "You will not," he writes to Just, "fail to recognise in this conception of religion one of the finest elements in my composition--namely, fancy." In other words, he consciously admits fancy to be at the source of his religious development. In the same year (1798) he sent some fragments to Wilhelm Schlegel for publication in the _Athenæum_, with the request that their author might be known as NOVALIS, "which is an old family name, and not altogether unsuitable."