His boyhood was at an end, and it is with the consciousness of awakened manhood that he now looks out upon life.

More than once in his future career a similar transformation was to be repeated--a great passion followed by a new direction of his activities, involving a saving breach with the past.
Goethe's father had determined from the beginning that his only son should follow the profession of law, in which, as we have seen, he had himself failed owing to his peculiarities of mind and temper.

In this determination there was no consideration of the predilections of his son, and in this fact lay the permanent cause of their estrangement.
The father's choice of a university for his son was another illustration of their divergent sympathies and interests.

Left to his own choice, the son would have preferred the university of Goettingen as his place of study, but his father ruled that Leipzig, his own university, was the proper school for the future civilian.

In connection with his departure for Leipzig Goethe makes two confessions which are a striking commentary on the conditions of his home life in Frankfort.