Goethe was a European celebrity by the age of twenty-five. He was a statesman and secret adviser to the court of Weimar, discoverer of the collarbone in cats, an avid botanist and mineralogist, and the author of a theory of colour which he regarded as more important than his literary works. He was a big thinker wary of big ideas, and the Germany of his time was swelling with them. Perhaps no work affords a better sense of his philosophical leanings than Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship.