His science was often at
fault; but he had a way of estimating at once the slightest indication of
land, in a floating weed or passing bird; he seemed actually to come
nearer to nature than other men. And that world in which others had moved
with so much embarrassment, seems to call out in Winckelmann new senses
fitted to deal with it. He is in touch with it; it penetrates him, and
becomes part of his temperament. He remodels his writings with constant
renewal of insight; he catches the thread of a whole sequence of laws in
some hollowing of the hand, or dividing of the hair; he seems to realise
that fancy of the reminiscence of a forgotten knowledge hidden for a time
in the mind itself; as if the mind of one, lover and philosopher at once
in some phase of pre-existence-philosophesas pote met' erotos--fallen
into a new cycle, were beginning its intellectual culture over again, yet
with a certain power of anticipating its results. So comes the truth of
Goethe's judgments on his works; they are a life, a living thing,
designed for those who are alive--ein Lebendiges fuer die Lebendigen
geschrieben, ein Leben selbst.
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