Perhaps it is because all eyes are now turned in a different direction that no one has noticed the inner freedom, the inconceivable stamp of personality that betrays itself in the manner in which Keller gazes at woman. That Keller does not reflect with her, that he does not idealise her, these are the distinctive features which form as it were a key to the right comprehension of Keller’s women. If we examine his characters one by one they will soon shew us of what material they were made. Gottfried Keller had two starting points from whence he depicted woman, and which appear to have come so naturally to him that it is impossible to suppose that they cost him much thought; we, however, give them our attention, because, in the first place, we are in search of another literary basis, and, secondly, because on these two points he is essentially a child of the age with which he otherwise has little in common. One of his starting points is the simplification of life and of woman, and the restriction of the same to decided, easily varied, and primitive forms. To this many will object that the scheming thus involved is a mistake with which Keller, least of all men, deserves to be reproached, for he is essentially one of Germany’s richest authors and the one who possesses most strongly the creative faculty. But for that very reason, because he is rich, it is all the more important to examine his works and to discover how small is the amount of material hitherto made use of in the literature, not only of Germany, but also of France and Scandinavia. Keller introduced the true and authentic psychology of a healthy woman, of whom he himself says in _Ursula_: “She was like a little spot of fruitful soil which turns green again as soon as it is refreshed by a ray of sunshine and a drop of dew.” This psychology originated with simple conditions of life and less complicated personalities than those which surround us nowadays, when fifty years have gone by since Keller’s youth--youth being the most impressionable period of human life. Whenever we stop to observe the characters of people who have attained to a certain height of spiritual culture, with whom I do not include the inhabitants of towns, because they are out of the question in a discussion on Keller, but country people and the dwellers in small villages,--we find that in Switzerland, as in other parts of Europe, we need only to probe to the hidden depths of human nature to discover outstanding personalities in women, even amongst those living in the plainest and least artificial surroundings.