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JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER

(1759-1805)

HEN Goethe wrote "Faust," he left no question of his pre-eminence among German poets, but it can be questioned if even the idea which inspired Faust is as lofty or as deep as Schiller's idea that the "Spieltrieb" is the impulse of higher civilization. As a hypothesis, it begins where the "agnostic» theory of the "survival of the fittest" under pressure of environment ends. The Darwinian theory shows man compelled by necessity to develop so much intelligence as will save him from destruction. The theory of Schiller shows him led by his affections to develop into the Infinity beyond Necessity. The "pressure of environment" may account for the kraal of the Kaffir, and the snow hut of the Eskimo, but Schiller's hypothesis accounts for the Parthenon and the dome of St. Peter's. He saw that men improve most by doing not what they must, but what they love best, and he found his solution of the problem of progress in Liberty and Love. Children who mold the rude image of a man from clay after a rain, or savages who scrawl a drawing into the face of a cliff, are compelled by no other necessity than that of doing their own pleasure impulse," acting under perfect liberty. the beginnings of all those arts which of mind.

of the "Spieltrieb" or "play But in such acts, Schiller saw express the higher operations

As an essayist he is greatly superior to Goethe in the power of connected and sustained statement. Few writers in or out of Germany have equaled him in this. It is as remarkable as in one sense it is regrettable, that a poet who expresses himself through verse in thronging images of sensuous beauty should, in defining in prose the high ideas which animate his verse, become abstract and severe to the last degree. In any ten lines of the essays in which he is stating his conclusions, the strongest intellect can find material for longer meditation than busy readers are generally able to give to ten pages. Hence Schiller has never been popular as an essayist, and he is never likely to become so. But those who will make a serious attempt to respond to the severe demands he makes on all who come to him for instruction are not likely either to forget him as a teacher or to cease to thank him,

He was born at Marbach, Würtemberg, November 10th, * 1759. In 1780, after concluding his studies in medicine, he became regimental surgeon at Stuttgart, where in 1781 he published his first notable work, "The Robbers." Not only was he obliged to publish it at his own expense, but when it appeared, his "suzerain" and military superior, Duke Karl Eugen, of Würtemberg, ordered him as a regimental surgeon to write no more poetry. Seeing no recourse as a poet except to disobey as a military surgeon, Schiller did so. After being sentenced to a fortnight's arrest for his contumacy, he "fled" to Mannheim and afterwards to Darmstadt and Frankfort, living under assumed names until he had made his own so famous that even Duke Karl Eugen concluded it would not be advisable to subject him to further military discipline for writing poetry. Returning to Mannheim in 1783, Schiller left it for Leipsic in 1785. Growing tired successively of Leipsic and Dresden, he removed in 1787 to Weimar, where he made his home for many years and where he died May 9th, 1805. His association with Goethe began in 1794, and it was of great advantage to both. Under the influence of the increased confidence in himself resulting from Goethe's appreciation, Schiller wrote many of his best lyrics, including "The Song of the Bell," no doubt the best "ode" in the German language, if the word "ode" be understood in the modern sense. As a writer of odes (carmina) in the ancient sense, Schiller is not the equal of Goethe or of Heine. It was not that Schiller failed intellectually of fitness for the highest possible rank in poetry; the greatest poet of any age must be also its greatest musician; and in musical power over language, Schiller, who is second only to Goethe in everything else, is inferior also to Heine. Had it been otherwise he might easily have been the greatest poet, not only of Germany but of modern times, for his power of sustained thought and coherent expression surpasses that of Goethe. It is remarkable that the poems of Schiller should be classical in nearly everything but their melody, while those of Goethe, Teutonic in their spirit, derive their supreme charm from a closer approximation to the classical mode in melody than had been made by any other German poet.

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W. V. B.

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MAN AND THE UNIVERSE

HILE man, in his first physical condition, is only passively affected by the world of sense, he is still entirely identified with it; and for this reason the external world, as yet, has no objective existence for him. When he begins in his

* The date is also given as November 11th, but the authorities favor the 10th.

æsthetic state of mind to regard the world objectively, then only is his personality severed from it, and the world appears to him an objective reality, for the simple reason that he has ceased to form an identical portion of it.

That which first connects man with the surrounding universe is the power of reflective contemplation. Whereas desire seizes at once its object, reflection removes it to a distance and renders it inalienably her own by saving it from the greed of passion. The necessity of sense which he obeyed during the period of mere sensations, lessens during the period of reflection: the senses are for the time in abeyance; even ever-reflecting time stands still whilst the scattered rays of consciousness are gathering and shape themselves; an image of the infinite is reflected upon the perishable ground. As soon as light dawns in man, there is no longer night outside of him; as soon as there is peace within him the storm lulls throughout the universe, and the contending forces of nature find rest within prescribed limits. Hence we cannot wonder if ancient traditions allude to these great changes in the inner man as to a revolution in surrounding nature, and symbolize thought triumphing over the laws of time, by the figure of Zeus, which terminates the reign of Saturn.

As long as man derives sensations from a contact with Nature, he is her slave; but as soon as he begins to reflect upon her objects and law she becomes her lawgiver. Nature, which previously ruled him as a power, now expands before him as an object. What is objective to him can have no power over him, for in order to become objective it has to experience his own power. As far and as long as he impresses a form upon matter, he cannot be injured by its effect; for a spirit can only be injured by that which deprives it of its freedom. Whereas he proves his own freedom by giving a form to the formless; where the mass rules heavily and without shape, and its undefined outlines are forever fluctuating between uncertain boundaries, fear takes up its abode; but man rises above any natural terror as soon as he knows how to mold it, and transform it into an object of his art. As soon as he upholds his independence towards phenomenal natures he maintains his dignity toward her as a thing of power, and with a noble freedom he rises against his gods. They throw aside the mask with which they had kept him in awe during his infancy, and to his surprise his mind perceives the reflection of his own image. The divine monster of the Oriental,

which roams about changing the world with the blind force of a beast of prey, dwindles to the charming outline of humanity in Greek fable; the empire of the Titans is crushed, and boundless force is tamed by infinite form.

But whilst I have been merely searching for an issue from the material world, and a passage into the world of mind, the bold flight of my imagination has already taken me into the very midst of the latter world. The beauty of which we are in search we have left behind by passing from the life of mere sensations to the pure form and to the pure object. Such a leap exceeds the condition of human nature; in order to keep pace with the latter, we must return to the world of sense.

Beauty is indeed the sphere of unfettered contemplation and reflection; beauty conducts us into the world of ideas, without, however, taking us from the world of sense, as occurs when a truth is perceived and acknowledged. This is the pure product

of a process of abstraction from everything material and accidental, a pure object free from every subjective barrier, a pure state of self-activity without any admixture of passive sensations. There is, indeed, a way back to sensation from the highest abstraction; for thought teaches the inner sensation, and the idea of logical or moral unity passes into a sensation of sensual accord. But if we delight in knowledge we separate very accurately our own conceptions from our sensations; we look upon the latter as something accidental, which might have been omitted without the knowledge being impaired thereby, without truth being less true. It would, however, be a vain attempt to suppress this connection of the faculty of feeling with the idea of beauty, consequently we shall not succeed in representing to ourselves one as the effect of the other; but we must look upon them both together and reciprocally as cause and effect. In the pleasure which we derive from knowledge we readily distinguish the passage from the active to the passive state, and we clearly perceive that the first ends when the second begins. On the contrary, from the pleasure which we take in beauty, this transition from the active to the passive is not perceivable, and reflection is so intimately blended with feeling that we believe we feel the form immediately. Beauty is then an object to us, it is true, because reflection is the condition of the feeling which we have of it; but it is also a state of our personality (our ego) because the feeling is the condition of the idea we conceive of it: beauty is therefore

doubtless form, because we contemplate it, but it is equally life, because we feel it. In a word, it is at once our state and our act. And precisely because it is at the same time both a state and an act, it triumphantly proves to us that the passive does not exclude the active, neither matter nor form, neither the finite nor the infinite; and that consequently the physical dependence to which man is necessarily devoted does not in any way destroy his moral liberty. This is the proof of beauty, and I ought to add that this alone can prove it. In fact, as in the possession of truth or of logical unity, feeling is not necessarily one with the thought, but follows it accidentally; it is a fact which only proves that a sensitive nature can succeed a rational nature, and vice versa; not that they co-exist, that they exercise a reciprocal action one over the other; and, lastly, that they ought to be united in an absolute and necessary manner. From this exclusion of feeling as long as there is thought, and of thought so long as there is feeling, we should, on the contrary, conclude that the two natures are incompatible, so that in order to demonstrate that pure reason is to be realized in humanity, the best proof given by the analysis is that this realization is demanded. But, as in the realization of beauty or in æsthetic unity, there is a real union, mutual substitution of matter and of form, of passive and of active, by this alone is proved the compatibility of the two natures, the possible realization of the infinite in the finite, and consequently, also, the possibility of the most sublime humanity.

Henceforth we need no longer be embarrassed to find a transition from dependent feeling to moral liberty, because beauty reveals to us the fact that they can perfectly co-exist, and that to show himself a spirit, man need not escape from matter. But if, on one side, he is free, even in his relation with a visible world, as the fact of beauty teaches, and if, on the other side, freedom is something absolute and supersensuous, as its idea necessarily implies, the question is no longer how man succeeds in raising himself from the finite to the absolute, and opposing himself in his thought and will to sensuality, as this has already been produced in the fact of beauty. In a word, we have no longer to ask how he passes from virtue to truth which is already included in the former, but how he opens a way for himself from vulgar reality to æsthetic reality, and from the ordinary feelings of life to the perception of the beautiful.

Complete.

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