“Life dwells in each celestial body And on its self-selected roads It likes to travel with the others. There are in our earth’s deep abodes The forces, shrouded now in night And rising up again to light If with eternal repetition Some circles infinitely roam, If thousand stones in strong construction Together build life’s glorious dome, Then through all things is pleasure thrilling, The great, the little, both are blessed, _Yet all this yearning, all this striving_ _In God the Lord, is eternal rest_.”[26] According to Schneege, Goethe was an agnostic. Faust says: “Mysterious even in open day Nature retains her veil, despite our clamors. That which she doth not willingly display, Cannot be wrenched from her with levers, screws and hammers.” _I, 1. Tr. Bayard Taylor._ This quotation however expresses Faust’s despair and not Goethe’s philosophical view. It is true that Goethe has made a few utterances which savor of agnosticism, but most of them are expressive of the idea that we can never be through with our wisdom; every new solution proposes new problems. “_Will mich jedoch des Worts nicht schämen:_ _Wir tasten ewig an Problemen._” _Zahme Xenien_, vii. [Will not be ashamed of the confession: We are dealing with problems without intercession.] How little Goethe was in accord with the view of modern agnosticism or phenomenalism, that we know the outside of nature only and not her inside, can be learned from his opposition to Haller’s famous lines: “Nature’s Within from mortal mind Must ever lie concealed. Thrice blessed e’en he, to whom she has Her outer shell revealed.” In answer to the agnostic sentiment of the famous naturalist, Goethe answered with the following verses (quoted in the translation given in “Fundamental Problems,” p. 142): “_Nature’s ‘within’ from mortal mind_” Philistine, sayest thou, “_Must ever lie concealed?_” To me, my friend, and to my kind Repeat this not. We trow Where’er we are that we Within must always be. “_Thrice blessed e’en he to whom she has_ _Her outer shell revealed?_” This saying sixty years I heard Repeated o’er and o’er, And in my soul I cursed the word, Yet secretly I swore. Some thousand thousand times or more Unto myself I witness bore: Gladly gives Nature all her store, She knows not kernel, knows not shell, For she is all in one. But thou, Examine thou thine own self well whether thou art kernel or art shell.