Читать книгу The Greatest German Classics (Vol. 1-14) - Various - Страница 1486

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Even to ordinary mortals Nature has not denied a very precious endowment—I refer to that lively impulse felt from earliest childhood, to take hold of the external world, to learn to know it, to enter into relation with it, and to form with it a complete whole. Certain chosen spirits, on the other hand, often have the peculiarity of feeling a kind of aversion to actual life, withdraw into themselves, and create in themselves a world of their own, in this wise achieving the highest inner development.

But when, in especially gifted men, appears the need common to all of us of seeking in the external world a corresponding realization for all the gifts with which Nature has endowed them, thereby raising their inner being to a self-relying whole, we may be assured of the development of a character in which both the present and the future world will rejoice.

Winckelmann was a man of this kind. Nature had placed in him whatever makes and adorns the true man. Furthermore, he devoted his entire life to the search for that which is harmonious and worthy in man and in art, which is primarily concerned with man.

An obscure childhood, insufficient instruction in his youth, disjointed and scattered studies in early manhood, the pressure of a school position, and all the worry and annoyance that are experienced in such a career—all these he had suffered as many others have. He had reached the age of thirty without having enjoyed a single favor at the hands of fate; yet in him were planted the germs of an enviable happiness, very possible to realize.

Even in these unhappy days we find the trace of that impulse to know for himself with his own eyes the conditions of the world, gloomy and disjointed traces it is true, but expressed with sufficient decision. A few attempts to see strange lands, undertaken without sufficient reflection, were unsuccessful. He dreamed of a journey to Egypt; he set out by way of France, but unforeseen obstacles turned him back. More wisely guided by his genius, he at last seized upon the idea of forcing his way to Rome. He felt how very profitable a sojourn in the Eternal City would be for him. This was no whim, no mere thought; it was a decided plan, which he undertook to realize with cleverness and decision.