Mit Henry Crabb Robinson

I called on Goethe to see whether I could induce him to act as an mediator between the Duke and the students in the quarrel that threatened an Auszug, or withdrawal, of the best young men of the University. Having listened to my representations, he coolly said: »So is it in these matters of police, in which both parties are right. The students, seeing the matter from their point of view, are perfectly in the right. But then the Duke is equally in the right; he has his own mode of looking at things from his point of view as sovereign.«