622
DOCS.
596,
597
AUGUST
1918
What
you say
about the
agreement
with
my
papers[6] pleased me very much,
although
I
knew from
our
last
conversation in
Berlin,
of
course,
that
we essentially
take the
same
view, especially
on
the
current
questions.
Cordial
regards, yours,
Fr. Adler.
597. To Heinrich
Zangger
[Ahrenshoop,
before
11
August
1918][1]
Dear friend
Zangger,
I
am
sitting
here
on a
dismal
rainy day
and receive
your
impetuous postcard.
I
should
come
to Zurich and
give a
talk?[2]
What
do
you
want
from
an
old wreck
or
empty eggshell
like
me?
What
useful
things
I
had
thought
up
are
alive in
fresher
and
younger
minds,
whereas
I
am plagued
with
a
stomach
that
is
con-
stantly
inclined to
rebellion[3]
and
that
takes
offense at
every
form of excitement
or
exertion.
The
intellect
gets crippled
and
one’s strength
dwindles
away,
but
glittering
renown
is
still
draped
around
the
calcified
shell.
You have
Weyl
in
Zurich,[4]
who
is
capable
of
presenting everything
I
could
say
much
more reliably
and
clearly
than
I
with
my
lack
of
command of
[mathematical]
form and
with
my
bad
memory.
I
am
just
right
for
the
Academy,
whose
quintessence
lies
more
in
sheer existence than in
activity.
But
I do
intend
to
travel
to
Switzerland this
year,
when
my exacting
stomach
allows,
somewhere
around the
boys’
fall vacation.[5] I must
take
a
breath
of
your
fresh
air,
to
assuage
the
feeling
of isolation
generated by
the
clashing
mentalities.-
My boys
now
write
me
heart-warming
letters. Albert
is
already
starting to
think
quite amusingly, oddly enough
about
technical
questions.
In
the
end, though,
I
am
glad
for
any
mental
quickness,
even
if
it
clings
to narrow-minded views.
Perhaps
he
will
realize
the
superfluousness
of
the
many
conveniences
sometime,
after
all! I
also
was
originally supposed
to become
an
engineer.
But the
thought
of
having
to
expend my
creative
energy
on
things
that
make
practical
everyday
life
even more
refined,
with the
goal
of bleak
capital
gain, was
intolerable to
me.[6]
Thinking
for its
own
sake
is
like music!
That
is
why
I
also
never
could
take to
Mach’s
principle
of
economy
[of
thought] as
the ultimate
psychological
driving
force.[7] Economy, correctly
understood,
may
be
one
motive
upon
which
intellectual
aesthetics
depends; however,
the
mainspring
of
scientific
thought
is
not
some
external
goal
to
be striven toward
but the
pleasure
of
thinking.
When
I
do not
have
a
problem
to
contemplate,
I
preferably
rederive
mathematical and