THE night I spent at Goslar something very remarkable occurred. Terror seizes me even now as I think back. I am not timid by nature, but I have a mortal terror of ghosts. What is fear? Is it a product of the understanding or of the soul? About this question I had many a discussion with Dr. Saul Ascher in Berlin when we met in the Café Royal, where I used to dine. He would have it that we fear a thing because our reason recognises therein due cause for terror. While I was eating and drinking to my satisfaction he was fond of constantly demonstrating the fine qualities of Reason. Toward the end of his demonstration he would look at his watch, and he always ended with: “Reason is the highest principle!” Reason! When I so much as hear the word I see before me Dr. Ascher with his abstract legs, his tight waistcoat of transcendental grey, and his harsh bitter-cold face, which might have served as a title-vignette to a book on geometry. The man was a straight line personified. In his search after the Positive the poor man had philosophised all grandeur out of life, all sunbeams, all faith, and all flowers, and all that remained to him was a cold, positive grave. He cherished a pet aversion for the Apollo of Belvedere and for Christianity. He even went so far as to write a pamphlet about the latter, proving it to be unreasonable and untenable. Indeed he wrote a host of books, in each of which Reason brags of its own excellence. The poor Doctor was serious enough about it, and in this respect they deserve esteem. But it was just this which was the best joke of all--that he would put on so fatuously serious a mien when he could not understand what every child understands by very reason of its childhood. I called upon this reasonable Doctor in his own house once or twice, and I found beautiful women there, for Reason does not forbid sensuality. Once when I intended to call upon him his servant said: “The Doctor has just died.” It did not impress me any more strongly than if he had said: “The Doctor is gone out.” But to return to Goslar. “The highest principle is Reason!” I said consolingly to myself as I got into bed. It did not answer the purpose, however. I had just been reading that horrible story in Varnhagen von Ense’s _Deutsche Erzählungen_, which I had brought with me from Clansthal, how a son, whose father intended to murder him, was warned at night by his mother’s ghost. The marvellous effectiveness of the story caused me to shiver with horror while reading. Then, too, ghost stories excite the most uncanny sensations when read on a journey, and especially at night in a town, in a house, in a room where one has never been. How many horrible things may have happened upon this very spot where I am now lying? One cannot refrain from conjecturing. Moreover, the moon shone so doubtfully into the room; all sorts of uncalled-for shadows were moving along the wall, and when I raised myself in bed to look closer, I saw----