But the nobler, the more varied, the more animating was the life
surrounding me, and the more I found all without me, as also all within
me, striving and tending towards harmony and unity, by so much the less
could I longer be restrained from seeking out this unity, even should it
be at the sacrifice of all that was dear to me, if need were for that. I
was impelled to seek to develop this unity all bright and living within
my own soul, and to contemplate it in definite, clear, and independent
form, so that finally I might be able to set it forth in my actual life
with sureness and certainty.

After nine years' interval I visited the university a second time; first
(spring of 1810) at Göttingen, and then a year and a half later (autumn
of 1811) at Berlin.[98]

I now began to pursue the study of languages. The linguistic treasures
which recent discoveries had brought us from Asia excited my deepest
interest wherever I came into contact with them.

But in general the means of acquiring languages were too lifeless, too
wanting in connection to be of any use to me; and the effort to work
them out afresh in my own way, soon led me to a renewed study of Nature.
Nature held me henceforth so fast that for years I was chained
uninterruptedly to her study, though truly languages went on as a
side-study during the time. Yet it was not as separate entities that I
considered the phenomena I was working at; rather was it as parts of the
great whole of natural life, and this also I regarded as reposing in one
supreme unity together with all mankind; Nature and man, the two
opposite mutually casting light upon each other and mirroring each
other.