all who could be designated as Halevy's successors.

Throughout this period of constant hack-work my thoughts were
entirely bent on my return to Germany, which now presented itself
to my mind in a wholly new and ideal light. I endeavoured in
various ways to secure all that seemed most attractive about the
project, or which filled my soul with longing. My intercourse
with Lehrs had, on the whole, given a decided spur to my former
tendency to grapple seriously with my subjects, a tendency which
had been counteracted by closer contact with the theatre. This
desire now furnished a basis for closer study of philosophical
questions. I had been astonished at times to hear even the grave
and virtuous Lehrs, openly and quite as a matter of course, give
expression to grave doubts concerning our individual survival
after death. He declared that in many great men this doubt, even
though only tacitly held, had been the real incitement to noble
deeds. The natural result of such a belief speedily dawned on me
without, however, causing me any serious alarm. On the contrary,
I found a fascinating stimulus in the fact that boundless regions
of meditation and knowledge were thereby opened up which hitherto
I had merely skimmed in light-hearted levity.

In my renewed attempts to study the Greek classics in the
original, I received no encouragement from Lehrs. He dissuaded me
from doing so with the well-meant consolation, that as I could
only be born once, and that with music in me, I should learn to
understand this branch of knowledge without the help of grammar
or lexicon; whereas if Greek were to be studied with real
enjoyment, it was no joke, and would not suffer being relegated
to a secondary place.