You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Berggasse 19,
Vienna IX,
10.5.1909
Dear Dr Pfister,
The Matterhorn1 now crowns the pile of unanswered letters on my desk. I gladly accept the small fragment of Switzerland in the symbolic sense you suggest, as homage from the only country in which I feel a man of property, knowing that the hearts and minds of good men there are well disposed towards me. I have no intention of defending myself. I have deliberately set myself up only as an example, but never as a model, let alone an object of veneration.
The Matterhorn can easily be given another and more modest meaning. The proportion of one to 50,000 may be roughly that in which fate fulfils our wishes and we ourselves fulfil our intentions. Incidentally it has struck me how little figures mean to our imagination; I have the greatest difficulty in believing that one would have to put only 50,000 of