I was born on the 21st November, 1768, in Breslau, where my father then resided as chaplain of the Reformed Church1 to a regiment in Silesia. My mother, to whom, on account of the frequent professional journeys of my father, I was indebted for my education while at home, was the youngest daughter of the Rev. Mr. Stubenrauch, chaplain in ordinary to the king. Of the first years of my life I retain, of course, but a few detached recollections, which are not worthy of a place in this sketch. When I was five years old, I began to attend the Friedrich’s school, conducted by the Rev. Mr. Heinz, chaplain in ordinary; and as I acquired very rapidly the mechanical parts and the first rules of the Latin language, and with equal rapidity committed to memory a number of vocables, the half of which I had generally forgotten by the next day, I soon passed through the lower forms. This progress having very early gained for me a reputation for cleverness, and having, as must inevitably be the case in a large school, placed me above a number of older and bigger boys, I began to be proud and conceited, and as a not unfrequent consequence of these qualities, I also acquired an irritability and violence of manner which were not grounded in my constitution. My mother, who, though she was fondly attached to me, was by no means blind to my faults, endeavoured, by acting upon my religious feelings, to change my pride into gratitude towards God, and although her own temperament inclined towards the same fault, she opposed to my violence a systematic calmness and an obvious justice, which convinced me by experience that I was the only one who suffered from my conduct, and that the good, which I wished to effect on such occasions, would be much more easily achieved in another manner. My pride was humbled by other means. As reading-books and chrestomathies had not yet been introduced into the school, I was soon made to read a Latin author. Here I saw nothing but darkness; for although I learnt to translate the words mechanically into my mother tongue, I could not penetrate into the sense, and my mother, who directed my German readings with much judgment, had taught me not to read without understanding. When I endeavoured to collect into a whole the detached pieces, which I had read at school, my deficiency in the necessary preliminary knowledge, frequently rendered me incapable of forming a vivid conception of the subject, a fact which made me very uneasy; and as I perceived none of this uneasiness in my comrades, I began seriously to doubt the much-lauded greatness of my natural faculties, and was in a state of constant fear lest others also should make this unexpected discovery. The imperfect scientific instruction which I received contributed to bring about the same result. Natural history, and natural philosophy, the rudiments of which are now taught to the youngest scholars, I only learnt to know through the Children’s Friend;2 and I was often quite alarmed at not being able to understand how it was that water boiled or froze, while I believed that everybody about me was familiar with the matter. In history also I could take no interest; I do not know whether it was that the lessons were not given with sufficient animation, but I know that they caused me deadly ennui, and that it cost me incredible trouble to retain the chronology of the four monarchies, and the order of succession of the Persian kings.
To this point I had attained, when my parents left Breslau and took up their abode in Pless in Upper Silesia, whence, a year later, they removed to the colony of Anhalt. They did not consider it advisable to leave me behind, a circumstance which was highly pleasing to me, and thus I spent several years partly in the country with them, partly at school in Pless. From my tenth to my twelfth year I was mostly in the country. When my father was at home, he occupied himself with my instruction, but during his absence little could be done to increase my knowledge. My dislike of the sciences, for which I believed myself to have no special talent, increased. I began actually to hate the study of languages, but, through the endeavours of my mother, I unconsciously imbibed an amount of practical knowledge which was quite unusual among children, in that part of the country at least.
From my twelfth to my fourteenth year, during which period I was at a boarding-school in Pless, I fell into the hands of a pupil of Ernesti, who, however inferior he might be as a scholar and a pedagogue, was of immense service to me. His enthusiasm for the classical languages, together with my ambitious desire to surpass others, stimulated the activity of my mind, and stories of celebrated men animated my zeal. But during this period, also, I had a peculiar thorn in the flesh. It consisted in a strange scepticism, the origin of which I can no longer recollect. I conceived the idea that all the ancient authors, and with them the whole of ancient history, were suppositious. The only reason, indeed, that I had for this belief, was that I was not acquainted with any proofs of their genuineness, and that all that I knew about them seemed to me disjointed and unreal. The reputation for cleverness which I still enjoyed, and which I was most anxious not to destroy by any disclosure of what I conceived to be a more than ordinary amount of ignorance and incapacity, had produced a closeness of character in me that caused me to keep silent on the subject of these strange doubts also, which, nevertheless, troubled me much, and I resolved to await the time when my own investigations should enable me to confirm or to refute them.