From another member of the circle[70] we have this additional tribute to Salzmann's high character: "His place (at table) was the uppermost, and that would have been his natural place, even had he sat behind the door.

His modesty does not permit me to pass a panegyric on him....

Let my readers imagine a philosophy, based at once on feeling and a thorough grasp of principles, conjoined with the most genuine Christianity, and he will have an idea of a Salzmann." Goethe and he, the same writer adds, were "the most cordial friends (_Herzensfreunde_)." In Leipzig the cynical _roue_ Behrisch had been Goethe's mentor; in Strassburg his mentor was Salzmann, and the fact emphasises all the difference between Goethe's Leipzig and Strassburg days.

That he chose Salzmann as his chiefest friend and confidant at a period when self-control was still far from his reach, is the proof that _des Lebens ernstes Fuehren_--the strenuous conduct of life--was in reality, as he himself claimed, an imperative instinct of his nature.

Certainly he did not regulate his life in Strassburg in accordance with the maxim of his self-chosen counsellor, yet we may conjecture that but for Salzmann's restraining influence he would have gone further and faster than he actually did.