Life at Pforta was, however, brightened by hours of simple and youthful joy. The pupils went out for walks, sang in chorus, bathed. Nietzsche took part in these delights, and related them. When the heat was too heavy, the life of the water replaced the life of study. The two hundred scholars would go down to the river, timing their steps to the tunes they had struck up. They would throw themselves into the water, following the current without upsetting the order of their ranks, accomplish a swim long enough to try, and yet elate, the youngest members of the party, then clamber up the bank at their master's whistle, put on their uniforms, which a ferry boat had convoyed in their wake; then, still singing, still in good order, would march back to their work and to the old school. "It is absolutely stunning," says Nietzsche in effect. So time went by, and the end of August came. The Journal is silent for eight days, then for six, then for a whole month. When he reopens his notebook, it is to bring it to an end. "Since the day on which I began this Journal my state of mind has completely changed. Then we were in the green abundance of the late summer: now, alas! we are in the late autumn. Then I was an _unter-tertianer_ (a lower form boy); now I am in a higher form.... My birthday has come and gone, and I am older--time passes like the rose of spring, and pleasure like the foam of the brook. "At this moment I feel myself seized by an extraordinary desire for knowledge, for universal culture. That impulse comes to me from Humboldt, whom I have just read. May it prove as lasting as my love for poetry!" He now mapped out a vast programme of study in which geology, botany, and astronomy were combined with readings in the Latin stylists, Hebrew, military science, and all the techniques. "And above all things," said he, "Religion, the foundation of all knowledge. Great is the domain of knowledge, _infinite_ the search after truth." A winter and spring-time sped away while the boy worked on. But now came his second holidays, then the third return to school; it was when autumn had denuded the great oaks on the estate of Pforta. Friedrich Nietzsche is seventeen years of age, and he is sad. Too long had he imposed upon himself a painful obedience; he had read Schiller, Hölderlin, Byron; he dreams of the Gods of Greece, and of the sombre Manfred, that all-powerful magician who, weary of his omnipotence, vainly sought repose in the death which his art had conquered. What cares Nietzsche for the lessons of his professors? He meditates on the lines of the romantic poet: "Sorrow is knowledge; they who know the most Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth, The tree of knowledge is not that of life."