“A sacred enthusiasm inspires me on this classic soil; the old world and the world around me raise their voices and draw me to them. Here I follow the ideas and turn over the pages of the ancient writers, giving myself no rest whilst day lasts and ever reaching new delights. By night love calls me to other cares; and if I am only half a philosopher, I am twice happy. But may I not say that I am also learning when my eye follows the contours of a loving breast, when with my hand I trace the lines of her form? It is then that I understand marble, I think and compare, I see with an eye that touches and touch with a hand that sees.” “Often I have made verses in her arms; often my playful finger has softly beaten out my hexameters on her back. As she breathes in her sweet sleep, her breath burns me to my innermost soul.”[193] His stay in Italy brought Goethe definitely to maturity. On this important stage in his life let us hear his biographer, Bielschowsky. “The voyage to Italy made a new man of him. His sickliness and nervousness disappeared. The melancholy which led him to think of early death and made him regard death as better than the former conditions of his life was replaced by a sublime serenity and joy in living. The taciturn and preoccupied man who in no society abandoned his grave thoughts had become happy as a child” (vol. i, p. 412). “From this time on, in calm and enviable security, he passed through the cycle of life which seemed so mysterious to others. Goethe became the serene Olympian, the wonder of posterity, whilst many of his contemporaries no longer saw in him the passionate pilgrim” (_ibid._, p. 417). It was after reaching the age of forty years that Goethe entered on the optimistic phase of his life. II GOETHE AND OPTIMISM Goethe’s optimistic period—His mode of life in that period—Influence of love in artistic production—Inclinations towards the arts must be regarded as secondary sexual characters—Senile love of Goethe—Relation between genius and the sexual activities The moral equilibrium of the great writer was not established once for all. In the course of his life, Goethe had several relapses into pessimism which, however, were ephemeral, and after which he became a man as complete and harmonious as was possible in the circumstances of his life. He reached a serene old age, and his activity did not relax until after his eightieth year, when he died.