When we read in his _Autobiography_ that Spencer ascribes his nervous breakdown to hard work, if we are Freudians we figure that Spencer has not told us the truth. We know that most cases of breakdown have had a previous history, usually in some love or sex repression. We are aware that Spencer was a bachelor who never had his craving for love satisfied, and probably led a celibate life. This led to his nervous troubles. This is merely one instance where by the aid of psychoanalysis we can read more than the author reveals. There are many instances where critics who had never heard of psychoanalysis still applied its principles. In his essay on Thoreau, Stevenson dilates on Thoreau's cynical views on friendship. When Stevenson inserted the essay in his _Familiar Portraits_ he wrote a little introductory note, in which he shows he penetrated the secret of Thoreau's views. Thoreau was simply seeking to find a salve for his own lack of social graces. His strange views and personality made him almost an impossible friend. II Even a great writer like Goethe deceived himself, as one can see by a famous passage in his autobiography as to why Spinoza appealed to him. In the fourteenth book he says that his whole mind was filled with the statement from the _Ethics_, that he who loves God does not desire God to love him in return. Goethe desired to be disinterested in love and friendship, and he says that his subsequent daring question, "If I love thee, what is that to thee?" was spoken straight from his heart. Great as Goethe's intellect was, he could not perceive that his partiality for this passage from Spinoza was due to the consolation he found in it for unreciprocated love. This particular sentiment from the profound work of that philosopher is really one of the least valuable parts of the work. It was probably inspired unconsciously by the philosopher's rejection at the hands of Miss Van den Ende, whom he meant to marry. The _Ethics_ was finished when the author was about thirty-three. Spinoza, who led the life of a celibate, sublimated his repressed love into philosophic speculation. When he wrote the passage in question he was consoling himself for loving a girl who did not care for him. The mechanism was: "I am not such a fool after all, because I love a girl who does not love me; why should I even want her to do so; don't we love God, and yet don't want Him to love us in return?" Goethe, having gone through the harassing experience that led to the writing of _Werther_, repeated the mental processes that Spinoza must have gone through in creating the sentiment about our not desiring God to love us in return.