yet twenty-one years old, but I can tell you frankly that the world
has no further charm for me. I have no delight in thinking of the
world, and the day of my departure from the academy, which a few
years ago would have been a day of festal joy, will not be able to
force one happy smile from me. With each step, as I grow older, I
lose more and more of my contentedness; and the nearer I come to the
age of maturity, the more I could wish that I had died in childhood.

This sounds gloomy enough, but the desperate mood did not last long, A
number of medical reports written in the summer of 1780 indicate that
Schiller was able to take the calm professional view of a case very
similar to his own. A fellow-student named Grammont was afflicted with
hypochondria, and Schiller was set to watch him. His analysis of the
case is eminently sane. He finds it difficult to decide whether the
young man's malady has its seat in the mind or in the bowels: whether
too much brooding over hard problems has ruined his digestion and
given him a headache, or whether a physical derangement has confused
his ideas of duty and religion. He thinks there is a fair chance of
curing the patient by means of medicine and good advice.--A youth who
can talk thus of another's _Weltschmerz_ is himself in no great danger
from the malady.

In November, 1780, he submitted a new thesis upon 'The Connection
between Man's Animal and Spiritual Nature'. In this essay he considers
the question whether, for the purposes of moral perfection, the body is
to be regarded as the enemy and gaoler of the soul, or as its friend and
coadjutor. The drift of his argument is to show in detail the dependence
of the spirit upon the flesh. Finding that philosophers have been unjust
to the body, he comes to its rescue,--expounding good doctrine in an
interesting though rather florid and unprofessional style. In the course