Don't let us be frightened like weaklings because we must often disagree: should our passions collide, can we not endure the collision ?"[83] Might we not infer from this passage that not Herder but Goethe was the dominating spirit in their intercourse ?[84] [Footnote 81: _Werke, Briefe_, Band i.p.264.He adds that he would prefer to be Mercury, the least of the seven planets that revolve round the sun, than first among the five that revolve round Saturn.] [Footnote 82: Herder himself says of his influence on Goethe: "Ich glaube ihm, ohne Lobrednerei, einige gute Eindruecke gegeben zu haben, die einmal wirksam werden koennen."-- Haym, _op.

cit._ i.

392.] [Footnote 83: _Ib._ Band ii.p.

18.] [Footnote 84: Schiller, in a letter to C.G.Koerner, the father of the poet, writes (July, 1787): "He [Herder] said that Goethe had greatly influenced his intellectual development."] Goethe found another source of inspiration in Strassburg besides Herder, and one which, as he describes it both in his Autobiography and in a contemporary effusion, moved him even more powerfully.

His first act on his arrival in Strassburg, he tells us, was to visit its cathedral whose towers had caught his eye long before he reached the town.