To the youth whose perceptive intellect still acts with fresh energy nature often exhibits itself with complete objectivity, and therefore with perfect beauty. But the pleasure of such a glance is sometimes disturbed by the saddening reflection that the objects present which exhibit themselves in such beauty do not stand in a personal relation to this will, by virtue of which they could interest and delight him; he expects his life in the form of an interesting romance. “Behind that jutting cliff the well‐mounted band of friends should await me,—beside that waterfall my love should rest; this beautifully lighted building should be her dwelling, and that vine‐clad window hers;—but this beautiful world is for me a desert!” and so on. Such melancholy youthful reveries really demand something exactly contradictory to themselves; for the beauty with which those objects present themselves depends just upon the pure objectivity, _i.e._, disinterestedness of their perception, and would therefore at once be abolished by the relation to his own will which the youth painfully misses, and thus the whole charm which now affords him pleasure, even though alloyed with a certain admixture of pain, would cease to exist. The same holds good, moreover, of every age and every relation; the beauty of the objects of a landscape which now delights us would vanish if we stood in personal relations to them, of which we remained always conscious. Everything is beautiful only so long as it does not concern us. (We are not speaking here of sensual passion, but of æsthetic pleasure.) Life is never beautiful, but only the pictures of life are so in the transfiguring mirror of art or poetry; especially in youth, when we do not yet know it. Many a youth would receive great peace of mind if one could assist him to this knowledge. Why has the sight of the full moon such a beneficent, quieting, and exalting effect? Because the moon is an object of perception, but never of desire: “The stars we yearn not after Delight us with their glory.”—G.