There was a great wisdom in that remark which Queen Christina of Sweden made, in her nineteenth year, about Descartes, who had then lived for twenty years in the deepest solitude in Holland, and, apart from report, was known to her only by a single essay: _M. Descartes_, she said, _is the happiest of men, and his condition seems to me much to be envied.[1]_ Of course, as was the case with Descartes, external circumstances must be favorable enough to allow a man to be master of his life and happiness; or, as we read in _Ecclesiastes_[2]--_Wisdom is good together with an inheritance, and profitable unto them that see the sun_. The man to whom nature and fate have granted the blessing of wisdom, will be most anxious and careful to keep open the fountains of happiness which he has in himself; and for this, independence and leisure are necessary. To obtain them, he will be willing to moderate his desires and harbor his resources, all the more because he is not, like others, restricted to the external world for his pleasures. So he will not be misled by expectations of office, or money, or the favor and applause of his fellowmen, into surrendering himself in order to conform to low desires and vulgar tastes; nay, in such a case he will follow the advice that Horace gives in his epistle to Maecenas.[3] [Footnote 1: _Vie de Descartes_, par Baillet. Liv. vii., ch. 10.] [Footnote 2: vii. 12.] [Footnote 3: Lib. 1., ep. 7.] _Nec somnum plebis laudo, satur altilium, nec Otia divitiis Arabum liberrima muto_. It is a great piece of folly to sacrifice the inner for the outer man, to give the whole or the greater part of one's quiet, leisure and independence for splendor, rank, pomp, titles and honor. This is what Goethe did. My good luck drew me quite in the other direction.