_Werther_ affords a good illustration of the disharmonies in the development of man’s psychical nature. Inclination and desires develop extremely strongly and before will. Just as in the development of the reproductive functions, as I showed in _The Nature of Man_, the different factors develop unequally and unharmoniously, so there is inequality and disharmony in the order of the appearance of the higher psychical faculties. Sexual appreciation and a vague attraction to the other sex appear at a time when there can be no possibility of the normal physical side of sex, with the result that many evils come about in the long period of youth. The precocious development of sensibility brings about a kind of diffused hyperæsthesia which may lead to trouble. The infant wishes to lay hold of everything he sees before him; he stretches out his arms to grasp the moon and suffers from his inability to gratify his desires. In youth there is still well-marked disharmony. Young people cannot realise the true relations of things, and formulate their desires before they understand that their will-power is not strong enough to gratify them, as will is the latest of the human powers to develop. Werther fell in love with a kindred spirit and gave way to his passion without consideration of the difficulties, Charlotte being already betrothed to another. This is the plot of the tragedy of the young man, who committed suicide, having given way to pessimism. He had not the will-power to conquer his sentiments and so fell into a state of lassitude, until, weary of life, he could see no other end than to blow out his brains. I need not linger over the last phase of the story of Werther, for it is the character of Goethe himself that is of interest. Goethe was able to subdue his passion for Lotte, and, after many amorous woes, consoled himself with another woman. Notwithstanding this difference, it is certain that in _Werther_, Goethe was telling part of the story of his own youth. Goethe himself is a witness to this, for in a letter to Kestner he wrote that “he was at work on the artistic reproduction of his own case.” The letter was written in July, 1773, whilst Goethe, then a writer twenty-four years old, was relating the sorrows of young Werther. The general tendency of _Werther_ has been described excellently by Carlyle.[190] “_Werther_,” he wrote, “is but the cry of that dim, rooted pain, under which all thoughtful men of a certain age were languishing; it paints the misery, it passionately utters the complaint; and heart and voice, all over Europe, loudly and at once responded to it.” Werther was “the first thrilling peal of that impassioned dirge which, in country after country, men’s ears have listened to, till they were deaf to all else.”