One day the poet Goethe, when in his advanced age, was riding home to Weimar with his friend Eckermann, and conversing on the immortality of the soul. They turned by Tiefurt into the Weimar road, and stopped at a spot, where, like other travellers, I have often meditated on Goethe's career; and they had from that outlook a majestic view of the setting sun. The great poet and philosopher remained for many minutes in perfect silence, and at last said with mystic but tremorless emphasis, “Untergehend sogar ist's immer dieselbige Sonne. Setting, nevertheless the sun is always the same sun. I am fully convinced that our spirit is a being of a nature quite indestructible, and that its activity continues from eternity to eternity.”