Aesthetical Essays of Friedrich Schiller
disposition, not to let himself be moulded by matter, but to place his
own creative and determining impress on matter, not so much to grasp
reality poetically and represent it poetically as to cast ideas into
reality, a disposition for lively representation and strong oratorical
coloring. All this he derived from the genial period, though later on
somewhat modified, and carried it over into his whole life and poetry;
and for this very reason he is not only together with Goethe, but before
Goethe, the favorite poet of the nation, and especially with that part of
the nation which sympathizes with him in the choice of poetic material
and in his mode of feeling.
Gervinus remarks that Schiller had at Weimar long fallen off from
Christianity, and occupied his mind tranquilly for a time with the views
of Spinoza (realistic pantheism). Like Herder and Goethe, he viewed life
in its great entirety and sacrificed the individual to the species.
Accordingly, through the gods of Greece, he fell out with strict,
orthodox Christians.
But Schiller had deeply religious and even Christian elements, as became
a German and a Kantian. He receives the Godhead in His will, and He
descends from His throne, He dwells in his soul; the poet sees divine
revelations, and as a seer announces them to man. He is a moral educator
of his people, who utters the tones of life in his poetry from youth
upwards. Philosophy was not disclosed to Plato in the highest and purest
thought, nor is poetry to Schiller merely an artificial edifice in the
harmony of speech; philosophy and poetry are to both a vibration of love
in the soul upwards to God, a liberation from the bonds of sense, a
purification of man, a moral art. On this reposes the religious
consecration of the Platonic spirit and of that of Schiller.
Issuing from the philosophical school of Kant, and imbued with the
antagonism of the age against constituted authorities, it is natural that
Schiller should be a rationalist in his religious views. It has been
justly said of him that while Goethe's system was an apotheosis of nature
Schiller's was an apotheosis of man.
Historically he was not prepared enough to test and search the question
of evidence as applied to divine things handed down by testimony, and his
Kantian coloring naturally disposed him to include all religions within
the limits of pure reason, and to seek it rather in the subject than in
anything objective.
In conclusion, we may attempt to classify and give Schiller his place in
the progress of the world's literary history. Progress is no doubt a law
of the individual, of nations, and of the whole race. To grow in
perfection, to exist in some sort at a higher degree, is the task imposed
by God on man, the continuation of the very work of God, the complement
of creation. But this moral growth, this need of increase, may, like all
the forces of nature, yield to a greater force; it is an impulsion rather
than a necessity; it solicits and does not constrain. A thousand
obstacles stay its development in individuals and in societies; moral
liberty may retard or accelerate its effects. Progress is therefore a
law which cannot be abrogated, but which is not invariably obeyed.
Nevertheless, in proportion to the increase of the mass of individuals,
the caprices of chance and of liberty neutralize each other to allow the
providential action that presides over our destinies to prevail. Looking
at the same total of the life of the world, humanity undoubtedly
advances: there are in our time fewer moral miseries, fewer physical
miseries, than were known in the past.
Consequently art and literature, which express the different states of
society, must share in some degree in this progressive march. But there
are two things in literary work: on the one hand the ideas and social
manners which it expresses, on the other the intelligence, the feeling,
the imagination of the writer who becomes its interpreter. While the
former of these elements tends incessantly to a greater perfection, the
latter is subject to all the hazards of individual genius. Accordingly
the progressive literature is only in the inspiration, and so to speak in
the matter; it may and must therefore not be continuous in form.
But more than this: in very advanced societies the very grandeur of
ideas, the abundance of models, the satiety of the public render the task
of the artist more and more difficult. The artist himself has no longer
the enthusiasm of the first ages, the youth of imagination and of the
heart; he is an old man whose riches have increased, but who enjoys his
wealth less.
If all the epochs of literature are considered as a whole it will be seen
that they succeed each other in a constant order. After the period when
the idea and the form combined in a harmonious manner comes another where
the social idea is superabundant, and destroys the literary form of the
preceding epoch.
The middle ages introduced spiritualism in art; before this new idea the
smiling untruths of Greek poetry fled away frightened. The classical
form so beautiful, so pure, cannot contain high Catholic thought. A new
art is formed; on this side the Alps it does not reach the maturity that
produces masterpieces. But at that time all Europe was one fatherland;
Italy completes what is lacking in France and elsewhere.
The renaissance introduces new ideas into civilization; it resuscitates
the traditions of antique science and seeks to unite them to the truths
of Christianity. The art of the middle ages, as a vessel of too limited
capacity, is broken by the new flood poured into it. These different
ideas are stirred up and in conflict in the sixteenth century; they
became co-ordinate and attain to an admirable expression in the following
age.
In the eighteenth century there is a new invasion of ideas; all is
examined and questioned; religion, government, society, all becomes a
matter of discussion for the school called philosophical. Poetry
appeared dying out, history drying up, till a truer spirit was breathed
into the literary atmosphere by the criticism of Lessing, the philosophy
of Kant, and the poetry of Klopstock. It was at this transition period
that Schiller appeared, retaining throughout his literary career much of
the revolutionary and convulsive spirit of his early days, and faithfully
reflecting much of the dominant German philosophy of his time.
Part of the nineteenth century seems to take in hand the task of
reconstructing the moral edifice and of giving back to thought a larger
form. The literary result of its effects is the renaissance of lyrical
poetry with an admirable development in history.
Schiller's most brilliant works were in the former walk, his histories
have inferior merit, and his philosophical writings bespeak a deep
thinking nature with great originality of conception, such as naturally
results from a combination of high poetic inspiration with much
intellectual power.
Schiller, like all great men of genius, was a representative man of his
country and of his age. A German, a Protestant free-thinker, a
worshipper of the classical, he was the expression of these aspects of
national and general thought.
The religious reformation was the work of the North. The instinct of
races came in it to complicate the questions of dogmas. The awakening of
individual nationalities was one of the characters of the epoch.
The nations compressed in the severe unity of the Middle Ages escaped in
the Reformation from the uniform mould that had long enveloped them, and
tended to that other unity, still very distant, which must spring from
the spontaneous view of the same truth by all men, result from the free
and original development of each nation, and, as in a vast concert, unite
harmonious dissonances. Europe, without being conscious of its aim,
seized greedily at the means--insurrection; the only thought was to
overthrow, without yet thinking of a reconstruction. The sixteenth
century was the vanguard of the eighteenth. At all times the North had
fretted under the antipathetic yoke of the South. Under the Romans,
Germany, though frequently conquered, had never been subdued. She had
invaded the Empire and determined its fall. In the Middle Ages the
struggle had continued; not only instincts, but ideas, were in conflict;
force and spirit, violence and polity, feudalism and the Catholic
hierarchy, hereditary and elective forms, represented the opposition of
two races. In the sixteenth century the schism long anticipated took
place. The Catholic dogma had hitherto triumphed over all outbreaks--
over Arnaldo of Brescia, the Waldenses, and Wickliffe. But Luther
appeared, and the work was accomplished: Catholic unity was broken.
And this breaking with authority went on fermenting in the nations till
its last great outburst at the French Revolution; and Schiller was born
at this convulsive period, and bears strong traces of his parentage in
his anti-dogmatic spirit.
Yet there is another side to Germanism which is prone to the ideal and
the mystical, and bears still the trace of those lovely legends of
mediaeval growth to which we have adverted. For Christianity was not a
foreign and antagonistic importation in Germany; rather, the German
character obtained its completeness through Christianity. The German
found himself again in the Church of Christ, only raised, transfigured,
and sanctified. The apostolic representation of the Church as the bride
of Christ has found its fullest and truest correspondence in that of
Germany. Hence when the German spirit was thoroughly espoused to the
Christian spirit, we find that character of love, tenderness, and depth
so characteristic of the early classics of German poetry, and reappearing
in glorious afterglow in the second classics, in Klopstock, Herder, and,
above all, Schiller.
It is this special instinct for the ideal and mystical in German nature
that has enabled spirits born of negation and revolution, like Schiller,
to unite with those elements the most genial and creative inspirations of
poetry.
VOCABULARY OF TERMINOLOGY.
Absolute, The. A conception, or, more strictly, in Kantian language, an
idea of the pure reason, embracing the fundamental and necessary yet free
ground of all things.
Antinomy. The conflict of the laws of pure reason; as in the question of
free will and necessity.
Autonomy (autonomous). Governing itself by the spontaneous action of
free will.
Aesthetics. The science of beauty; as ethics of duty.
Cognition (knowledge; Germanice, "Erkenntniss") is either an intuition or
a conception. The former has an immediate relation to the object, and is
singular and individual; the latter has but a mediate relation, by means
of a characteristic mark, which may be common to several things.
Cognition is an objective perception.
Conception. A conception is either empirical or pure. A pure
conception, in so far as it has its origin in the understanding alone,
and is not the conception of a pure sensuous image, is called notio.
Conceptions are distinguished on the one hand from sensation and
perception, and on the other hand from the intuitions of pure reason or
ideas. They are distinctly the product of thought and of the
understanding, except when quite free from empirical elements.
Feeling (Gefuehl). That part of our nature which relates to passion and
instinct. Feelings are connected both with our sensuous nature, our
imagination, and the pure reason.
Form. See Matter.
Ideas. The product of the pure reason (Vernunft) or intuitive faculty.
Wherever the absolute is introduced in thought we have ideas. Perfection
in all its aspects is an idea, virtue and wisdom in their perfect purity
and ideas. Kant remarks ("Critique of Pure Reason," Meiklejohn's