Johns Hopkins University Press

Schiller and Romanticism

Author(s): Irving Babbitt
Source: Modern Language Notes, Vol. 37, No. 5 (May, 1922), pp. 257-268
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2915199
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MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES

VOLUME XXXVII

SCHILLER

MAY, 1922

NUMBER5

AND ROMIANTICISiM

ProfessorLovejoy'snotice1 of my volumeRousseau and Romanticism reveals fundamental differencesof opinion regarding

Schilleran-dhis relationto the romanticmovement.In the introductionto thisvolumeI remarkthatmymethodis open in certain
respectsto gravemisunderstanding.2
ProfessorLovejoy has, however, surpassed anythingI had anticipated. In ingenious and
complicatedmisapprehension
of my point of view he has easily
outdoneall myotherreviewers.In orderto understandthe difference betweenProfessorLovejoy and myselfregardingSchiller it
will be necessaryto clear away certainof his misapprehensions.
In the firstplace, I do not, as ProfessorLovejoy affirms,
identify
romanticismwith Rousseauism;on the contraryI give the name
of Rousseauismonly to emotionalromanticism-oneof the three
main types of romanticismthat I amnat painisto distiniguish.
Even here I put my chiefemphasison Rousseau because he is on
the whole the most significantfigurein this movementand not
because he is its originator. On the contrary,I assertthat con3 is perhapsmore imsideredpurelyas an originatorShaftesbury
portantthan Rousseau a fact that bears on our presenttopic
becauseof theinfluencedirector indirectof Shaftesbury
on various
Germans of the eighteenthcenturyincluding Schiller.4 I am
concernedforthe mostpartwithonlyone mainiaspectof emotional
'See Modern Language Notes, Mlay, 1920, p. 302 ff.
Rousseau and Romanticism, p. xvi.
31bid., p. 44.
4 See article by A. L. Carter on " Schiller and Shaftesbury,"International
Journal of Ethics, Jan., 1921.
2

257

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258

MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES

romanticism
itself,namelyits ethicalor pseudo-ethical
pretensions,
its attemptto set up as a philosophyof life or even as a religion.
What I have tried to do,is to trace this ethicalor pseudo-ethical
aspect of the movementin the life and literatureof the past hundredyearsor more. It is quite besidethemarkto say,as Professor
Lovejoy says, that I have " attained tlhe distinctionof having
damned perhaps a larger numberof eminentand long-accepted
writersthan any other modern critic,"for, as I am carefulto
indicate,5I am not attemptingroundedestimatesof individuals.
Forget this distinctionand it is easy enough to presentme as a
sort of fanatic runningamuck throughthe art and literatureof
the last two hundredyears and giving the impression,as ProfessorLovejoy says, that most of it "ought never to have been
written." But I am not engagingin any wholesalecondemnation
of eitherthe eighteenthor the nineteenthcentury. It is evenless
sensibleperhapsto indict a wholecenturythan it is accordingto
Burke to indict a wholepeople. If I had attemptedanythingof
the kind, ProfessorLovejoy would be justifiedin his chargethat
I am not a humanistbut an extremist. In my studyof emotional
romanticism
in its relationto ethicsthe questionthat arises is not
the humanisticquestionat-all, namelythe questionof mediation,
but a question of truth or error. The man who mediateswith
reference
to erroris not a humanistbut a Laodicean.
It mightalso be wellto say thatI am notsettingup a philosophy
of history. A book that has been attractinga good deal of
attentionof late in Germany,Oswald Spengler's "Downfall of
the Occident,"6 develops a thesis that has certain superficial
points of contact with my own. According to Spengler, the
whole of the Occident is now engaged in a sort of rake's progress, which starts with Rousseau and his return to nature.
Spengler believes that it is not only possible to establishfatal
curvesfor the great "cultures" of the past but that thesecurves
may be extendedinto the future. He actuallyhas a table exhibiting the degreeof degeneracythat the Occidentwill have attained
by the year 2000. The wholeconceptionnot only impliesa phiRousseaub and Romanticism, p. xvii.
Der Untergang des Abendlandes von Oswald Spengler (1918). This
book, which contains over 6,00closely printed pages of heavy philosophical
generalization, is said to have had a sale of more than 50,000 copies!
e

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SCHILLER

AND ROMANTI(CISM

259

losophy of history,but a philosophyof historythat has in my

judgmentgone mad. My own primaryemphasis is on something
that Spengler eliminates entirely,namely the free moral choices
of individuals and the fruitsof these choices in life and conduct.
My chiefinterestin shortis in the problemof the will. All other
aspects of emotional romanticismseem to me of small moment
as comparedwith its relation to this problem. My own view of
the will has much in common with the Christian view or with
the view that is implied in Aristotle'streatmentof habit in the
Nicomachean Ethics. What is specificallyhuman in man is, I
affirm,
the powerto puLllback his impulseswith referenceto some
model set above his ordinaryself. That ProfessorLovejoy should
assimilatemy sharplydualistic position,my insistenceon the full
Pauline contrast between a law of the spirit and a law of the
members,with that of the aesthetic and pantheistic Schelling,
suiggests,so far as it suggests anything,the futilityof tryingto
conveythoughtby means of wordsat all.
Let the long contentioncease!
Geese are swans and swans are geese.

Now it is possible to trace with the utmost accuracy the process

by whichthe Christianand Aristoteliandualism gave place in the
course of the eighteenthcenturyto nlaturalistictendencies. This
naturalistictrendappears most clearlyperhaps in the transformation at this time of such wordsas virtueand conscience.7 Instead
of being a power of controlover the natural man in general and
the emotionsin particular,consciencebecomes itselfan expansive
emotion--or,in Rousseau's own phrase not a "judgment," as it
had been traditionally,but a " sentiment."8 "cSi c'est la raison
qui fait l'homme,c'est le sentimentqui le conduit."
We need be in no doubt as to Schiller's position regardingthe
guiding elementin man since he has tak-enthis very sentenceof
Rousseau as the motto of his AestheticLetters. It is a commonplace of criticisnm
that he turnedto emotionas an escape fromwhat
seemed to him the Draconian severityof Kant's assertion of the
moral law, the stoical hardness and angularity of the Kantial
7See my paper on " Rousseau and Conscience" in JournaZof Philosophy,
25 March, 1920, p. 186 ff.
8 Nouvelle HeJloise,
Pt. VI, Lettre VII.

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260

MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES

rationalism.9 Schiller makes many more reservationsthan Rousthe emotionls

he is led in niosmall deegree
seau, but in thustrustilngr
to trustthe natural man and his supposedgoodness. He finally
arriveslike Rousseau at the conceptiollof the " beautifulsoill,"'
the personwho does rightinstinctively
and withouta trace of the
inner struggle or " civil war in the cave " on which both the
Christianianidthe classical (lualist put so much emphasis.
The person who is at one with himselfand is sponitaneously
go,od anidbeautifulhas much in commonwith the personwho is
at one withnature and is spontanieously
poetical. Trhisbringsus
to the treatiseof Schillerthatled directlvto the r'ise of a romanitic
school, that On Naive and SentimentalPoetry. Accordinigto
the naive poet is natture,whereas
Schiller's familiar distinctionthe poetwho has fallenfromnatureand looksback to it longingly
fromthe artificialitiesof an advanced civilizationis sentimental.
I hardlyneed recallthatthis wholedistiiuctioln
is rapidlybecomilng
obsolete. It is not simplythat we refuseto see in Homer a naive
poet and in Horace the fouinderof t'he sentimentalschool " of
whichhe still remainsan unsurpassedmodel,"1- but that we aie
rejectingmoreand morethe -hole contrastbetwteen
a Naturpoesie
and a Kunstpoesie,at least in anythingr
like the formin which
Schillerand otherRousseauisticprimitivistsestablishedit.
But, repliesProfessorLovejoy,Scliillerxv-otul(d
inothave us returin
to naturein Rousseau's sense,but wvould
have uls stilruggleforward
to an Elysium. " The goal towi-ards
which man -strivesthrough
cuLlture
(Kultur) is infinitely
to be preferredto the goal to w-hich
he attains throughnature."'12 This, says ProfessorLo.vejoy,is
Schiller'sepoch-making
conclusion. " Mr. BIabbitthas apparently
missed the sig,nificance
of the -writing
which is perhapsthe most
(lecisivesingle turning-pointin the historywith which his book
is concerned." The German romanticistsare certainly nmore
frien(dly
to " culture," at least in the senlse that they are more
Fori Schiller's owvnaccount of the matter, see Uber Anintth uwid ll"iirdec
x, 101 (References are to the Goedeke edition.)
10For what one may term the standar-d definitionof the beautiful soul
in Germany, see ibid., x, 103.
x, 446.
x; 453. The (Coe(leke e(litioni lhas Ktl i/r) istea(d of NA fur, a imisprilit
that makes tlhe,sentence imieaniingless.

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SCHIIILER

AND ROMAkNTICISM

261

friendlyto the intellectand its activity,than some of the Stiirmer

and Driinger. If theyare less inclinedto say with Rousseau that
"the man w-horeflectsis a depravedanimal," the influencemay
be duiein some measureto Schiller. But the real questionraised
by this movement,let me repeat,is even less primitivismof the
intellectthan primitivismof the will. In the Elysium to which
Schiller would have us press forwardas well as in the " state of
iature" to which Rousseau looks back with longing the escape
fromman's presentdisharmonyis conceivedexpansively.13What
unlderliesthis substitutionof emotionalexpansionfor a concentrationiof the -willis, as I have tried to show in my volLLme,
namelythe
somethingstill more centralin romanticpsychology,
problemof the imagination. ProfessorLovejoy has devoted a
large part of his reviewto developingthe thesisthat I am myself
only a belated romanticistattackinghis own kind. My stupidity
is of muiehthe same orderapparentlyas that of the fabledbeast
of aitiqinitythat devouiredhis own paws. Now I admit that I
have at least this much in commonwith the romanticiststhat I
assign a supremelyimportanlt
role to the imagination,that I grant
the truth of the Napoleonic dictum that "imagination governs
the world." My wholebook is devoted,however,to distinguishing
betweendifferent
typesof imagination,especiallybetweenwhat I
termthe Arcadian or idyllicimaginationon the one hand, and the
ethical or centripetalimaginationon the other. The Arcadian
imaginationpartscompanywithrealityentirely,the ethicalimagiis disciplinedto a reality,or if one prefers,a law distinct
niationi
"For a good example of primitivism of the will see the poem Die Wiirde
der Fr-anent(1795).
The corirective of man's expansive energy is not a
power of control or ethical will in mani himself, but woman conceived as
an embodimentof the naive an.d childlike virtu.es,of spontaneous gentleness
and svmpathy. Perhaps the most extreme instance of primitivism of the
will in Schiller dates from the samnerather late period in his life:
Siielhst dii das H1l1lhste,das Gr.isste? Die Pflanze kann es dich lehren.
W,Vas
sie Willenlos ist, sey diu es wollend-das ists!
It is hardly niecessaryto dilate on the sheer expansiveness of the youthful Schiller, who alone exercised an important direct influence on the
Euiropean movement throuLghDie Rduber. A "liberty" that explodes
against the restraints of the existing social order is to be tempered, not
by somneniew principle of selection and control, but by a sympathy tll.ht
is ready to bestow " a kiss on thlewhole wvorld."

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262

MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES

fromthatof the naturalorder. Professor

Lovejoyaccusesme of
misrepresenting
Schiller,and yethas publishedwhatpurports
to
be a reviewofmybookin 'which
he sayspractically
of
nothing this,
mymaindistinction.
Schillersaysthat"he too was bornin Arcadia." The questioni
I raiseis whether,
so faras theultimatequalityofhis imagination
he evergot out of Arcadia. As to his theoryof the
is concerned,
imaginationit seemsto me that no doubtis possible. He not
onlyproclaimsthe idyllthehighestformof art but the Elysium
to whichhe invitesus is like Rousseau'sstateof nature,plainly
idyllic. To indulgethis typeof imaginationis to escapefrom
ordinaryrealitywithoutachievinga higherreality;it is to fall
into mere nostalgia,the infiniteindeterminate
longingof the
romanticheart. Here is the sourceof the contrastbetweenthe
ideal and the real,betweenpoetryand lifethatis all-pervasive
in
this movement.As the romanticimagination
soarsintoits own
"

intenseinane "

des Erdenlebens
SchweresTraumbildsinkt und sinkt und sinkt.

This strainingof the imaginationaway from an unpalatable

realitytowardssomething
that has neverexistedand nevercan
existis especiallymanifestin a poemlike The Godsof Gireece,
a
mainsourceof whatonemaytermromantic
Hellenism. One may
see in H6lderlin,a followerof both Schillerand Rousseau,the
of the classicalideal not merelyinto a nostalgia
transformation
but a mortalnostalgia.'4 It is in part due to the influenceof
Schillerthatthe Greekspirititselfhas become,in WalterPater's
phrase,theSangrailof an endlesspilgrimage.
Schiller'sGreeceis not onlyunreal,a mereaestheticland of
heart'sdesire,but,in general,beauty,as he conceives
it,is reduced
to a worldof appearance(Schein), a " realmof shadows" without
substantive
realityin eitherthe naturalisticor the humanistic
sense. The relationbetweenthisReichder Schatten15 and Rous" (laterto becometheIvoryTower) is
seau's " Pays des chimeres
evident.
Mich verlangtins ferneLand hiniiber
Nach Alcijusund Anakreon,etc.
Fliehet aus dem engendumpfenLeben
In der SchonheitSchattenreich!

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SCHILLER AND ROMANTICISM

263

On the surface,Schiller'spointof viewseemshighlyfavorable

to the Greeks,conceivedas at one with"nature" in Rousseau's
sense,and to "naive" people in general. But the sentimental
poetwhowaslaterto becomewithsomemodifications
theromantic
poet has an advantagein whatappearsat firstsightto be his
weakness:he is filledwithaspiration.He longsforexampleto be
like the Greek,but the Greekhimselfdid not long. The sentimentalpoethas in shortsomething
thatthe Greekpoetlacked,the senseof infinitude.Schillernot onlyassociatesthe infinite
withthe escapefromlimitationsbut regardssuch an escape as
desirable.To be sure,themeaningofthewordinfinite
too
is no-ne
clear. Professor
fivemeaningsof the word
Lovejoydistinguishes
infinite
in the earlystagesof Germanromanticism
and attributes
to this loosenessof usage muchof the later confusionas to the
meaningof the wordromantic.16But it will be notedthat all
the infinites
that ProfessorLovejoyenumeratesare infinitesof
expansion. Now Aristotlesaysthatthe infinite
conceivedin this
purelyexpansivewayis bad.17 I not onlyacceptthisAristotelial
dictumbut distinguish
in oppositionto the infiniteof expansion
an infiniteof concentration.What is trulycentralin human
howeverincapableit may be of finalformulation
experience,
in
termsoftheintellect,
maybe seizedwiththeaid oftheimagination
and suppliesa standardwithreference
to whicha manmayimpose
controlupon his ordinaryself: to imposethis controlupon the
naturalman is to workin the humanisticsense. To selectan
adequatehumanend and thento worktowardsit imaginatively
is to display,whether
in art or life,genuinefreedom.The presence of the imaginationthat co-operates
withthe reasonin the
serviceoftheethicalwill,is feltevenless in thedetailsof a work
of art than in its generalstructure
and design:so that one may
call the typeof imagination
presentin thebestart,the architec1"Modern Language Notes, March, 1920, p. 141.
Eth. Nich. ni,vi, 14. For the " infinite" in this sense cf.also Nietzsche:

17

"Proportionatenessis 'strangeto us, let us confessit to ourselves; our

itchingis really the itchingfor the infinite,the immeasurable. Like the
rideron his forwardpantinghorse,we let the reinsfall beforethe infinite,
we modernmen, we semi-barbarians--sand
are only in our highest bliss
when we-are in most danger." (Beyond Good and Evil, translated by
Helen Zimmern,p. 169-70.)

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264

MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES

tonic imagination. The art that has this imaginativequality is

in the Aristoteliansense "highly serious." The widenessof the
gap betweenmyown Aristotelianpointof view and thatof Schiller
is revealedby the fact that for him the architectonicelementin
the workof art is the result,not of manl'sresponsiblechoices,but
of natural necessity.ls Man showvshis freedom,accordinigto
Sehiller,not bv workin any sense of the wordbuitby play,-a form
of play that involvesan even more completeemancipationfronm
concentrationand purpose than is found in Kant's Critique of
AestheticJudymentfromwhichSchiller'stheoriesso ]argelyderive.
The impulse to play (Spieltrieb), says Sehiller, unites the two
naturesof man, a union that is achieved,accordingto the hbLmanist, by the effortof the ethical will. ' Der Mensch ist nur da
ga.nzAMensch,
wo er spielt."19 Here is a clear-cutassertionthat
calls for equally clear-cutacceptanceor rejection. Reject it and
the whole struLicture
of Sehiller's aesthetictheorycrumblesat the.
base.20

Schiller's emancipationof the imagiuiationfrom purpose and

realityand at the sa.metime his settingup of sentimentor expansive emotionas the guiding elementin man, culminatingin the
niotionthat man is completelyhuman only whenhe is engaged in
freeaestheticplay,leads, I assert,to a decadenitaestheticism. It
is this assertionthat has especiallyscandalizedProfessorLjovejoy.
Yet it is not difficult
to,show that the substitutionof the Schillerianconceptionof " play" forthe Aristotelianconceptionof work
to thehurman
according,
law encouragesthe exaltationof indolence,
the romaniticgospel of a "wise passiveness." The Greeks,says
Schillerhimself,"freed the eternallyblessedcgods fromthe bon-ds
i ber A nmuth und Wiirde,x, 70.
fiber die disthetisc7te Erziehuing des Menschen, x, 327.
20 Sillce
writing mv voluime, I lhave read the woik of Victor Basch:
La Po6tique de Schiller, 2e 6d. 1.911. Thouigh holding a conception of
criticism very differentfrom my own, he arrives at abouit the same conlcltisions regarding Schilleir's infltuenceon the German romanticists (see
P. 324 ff.) TIe grants, however, rather more than I do to Schiller and
rather less to Fichte in the formation of the phenomnenon
known as romantic irony. H-Iistotal jud(grmenton Schiller as an aestlhetic tlheoiristis as
follows (p. 348)
"Eii (dfinitive, iioIIs croyons qlie ni la m6thode, ni les
pr6misses, ni les concluisions de la poktique de Schiller ne sont viaiment
valables."
9

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SCHILLER

AND ROMANTICISM

265

of every aim, every duty, and every care, and made idleness
(Mliissiggang)and indifference
the enviedlot of the divineestate:
a purelyhuman name for the freestand most exalted being."21
The relationbetweensuch passages and FriedrichSchlegel'sIdylle
ilber den M1liissiggang
can scarcelyescape any one; ani(i if this
chapterof Lucinideis not a bit of decadentaestheticismthe phrase
has no meaning.22
The desireof Schillerto escape fromthe unduly didactictrend
of the neo-classic school and from the utilitarianismof the
"Enlightenment," was in itself perfectlylegitimate. Unfortunatelyhe repudiatedthe didactic and utilitarianerroronly to
fall into an aestheticismthat openedthe way forthe later fallacies
of l'art pour l'art. Instead of affirming
a possible co-operationi
of imagrinationi
and reason in the serviceof the forcein man that
I have termedthe ethical will, he sets up expansiveemotionas a
substitutefor will and establishesan oppositionibetweenreasoi
and imaginationeven more acute than-that of whichI complain
in the neo-classicist. One will never achieve on Schillerianlines
the imaginativereasonthat MatthewArnold discoversin the best
Greekpoets. " In aestheticjudgments,"says Schiller," ouirinterest is not in moralityfor itselfbut only in freedom,a d morality
can please our imaginationonly in so far as it makes freedom
visible. Hence thereis manifestconfusionof the bouindaries
when
one demandsmoral purpose in aestheticthings and, in order to
widen the realm of reason, seeks to forcethe imaginationout of
its properdomain. Imagination will eitherhave to be subjected
entirelyto reasonianid in that case all aestheticeffectis lost, or
reason will have to yield a part of its sovereignty
to imagination,
and in that case thereis no great gain for morality. As a result
of pursuingtwo different
ends, you will run the risk of missing
both. You will chain the freedomof phantasythroughmoral
restrictions
and disturbthe necessityof reasonthroughthe caprice
23
(Willkiihr) of imaginiation."
The relationbetweenthis passage and otherpassages of Schiller
I have been quiotinig
anidroananticpsychologyis in a generalway
obvious. It was no part of the plan of my bookto writea detailed
2
Ober die iisthletischeErziehung des Alenschen,x, 328.
' For Novalis and
Schiller, see Haym, Romantische Schlu1e,p. 376.
23 Voin Erhabenen, x, p. 176, line
29 ff.

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266

MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES

historyof romanticism
as a Europeanmovement,
or of the connectionbetweenSchillerand the Germanromantics
in particular.
I have,as a matterof fact,givenonlya fractionof the material
on thislatterpoint. My volumedoes
I myselfhave accumulated
notcompeteon theirowngroundwiththeinvestigations
ofHaym,
or Enders,or Rouge,or Professor
Lovejoyhimself.The inifluence
of Schilleron FriedrichSchlegelis difficult
to elucidatein detail.
in
This difficulty
is
part due to a certainloosenessin Schiller's
use of such wordsas nature,24
partlyto the fact that his main
comparison(thatbetweenthe " naive" in the Rousseauistic
sense
and the " sentimental
") is betweentwo thingsone of which
neverexisted,and finallyto thefactthatFriedrichSchlegelis an
unusuallyconfused
andvacillating
thinker.25
Stilltherelationship
betweentheideas of Schillerand thoseof FriedrichSchlegelis in
its broad lines scarcelyopen to question. Afterexaltingthe
classicismof the Greeks,a classicisminto whichentersa strong
elemelntof Schiller'snaivete, Schlegel finallysecedes to the
romanticpointof view (relatedto the "sentimental"attitude)
becauseof its superiority
on the side of the " infinite."One can
even explainon Schilleriangroundsthe glorification
by Schlegel
and otherromanticists,
of the middleages as the acmeof romanticism. They seemto findin the middleages whatSchillerhad
required:26 it was a periodat oncenaive and infinitely
aspiring.
When one brushesaside the chargesof inaccuracyand misrepresentation
of Schillerthat ProfessorLovejoybringsagainst
me and failsto substantiate,
and getsat theessenceof the differencebetweenus, one findsthatit is philosophicalthe difference
namelybetweenan Aristotelian
realismand an idealismthat so
faras it revealsitselfin thisreviewhas a highlyTeutonicflavor.
This difference
goes so deep thata full discussionof it wouldbe
beyondthe scopeof ModernLanguageNotes. A wordhowever
shouldbe said aboutthe significance
of the play-theory
of art for
thecriticand teacherof literature.If one tracesbackthistheory
fromSchillerto Kant's Critiqueof Aesthetic
Judgment,
and from
4' Cf. Basclh,op. cit., p. 206.
25In November,1797, Friedrichwroteto

his brotherWilhelm: "Meine

Erkliirungdes Worts romantischkann ich Dir nicht gut schicken,weil
sie-125 Bogen lang ist! " Cf. Haym, RomantischeSchule, 803 (note).
-" Tbernaive und sentimentalische
Dichtung,x, 509.

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SCHILLER AND ROMANTICISM

267

27 by whomKant was largelyinfluKant to the Englishwriters

enced,one findsthatthe ideasthatled to thetheorydevelopedill
closeconnection
withtheEnglishutilitarian
tradition.The germs
of it are indeedto be foundin Bacon himself.28If one follows
downthe play-theory
in England one finallycomesto. Herbert
Spencer'swell-known
expositionof it in his Psychology.The
animusof the wholemovement
is revealedin Spencerwhoexalts
physicalscienceand the scientific
investigation
of natureto the
firstplace at the sametimethathe reducesart and literatureto
a secondaryand merelyrecreativerole. Schiller has defined
admirablyand attackedwhatwe shouldcall nowadaysthe point
of viewof the tiredbusinessman.29 But the play-theory,
being
as it is in intimatealliancewiththe wholeutilitarianconception,
favorsthe tiredbusinessman. Only whenthe artistor writer
displaysa concentration
and virileeffort
entirelydifferent
from
thatof the man of sciencedoes he rise abovethe recreative
level
and achievehighseriousness.The imagination
of Dante forexample was not playingin the Kantian or Schilleriansensebut
working
in theAristotelian
sensewhenhe wrotetheDivineComedy.
For the teacherof literaturein particularto lose sightof a distinctionof thiskindis suicidal. He willbe forcedintoa position
subordinate
to the utilitarian,
as indeedis moreor less the case
already,and will be fortunate
if he is not finallyeliminatedentirely. One shouldindeedrecollectthat thereare manygrades
of artisticand literaryexcellenceshortof thehighest. Poemsof
SchillerlikeDas ReichderSchattenand Die GutterGriechenlands
are not onlysuccessful
in theirownwaybut extraordinarily
suc-

7Many of these English sources are indicated in the edition of the

Critique of AestheticJudgmentby J. C. Meredith(1911).
See Advancementof Learning,Bk. II: " The use of this feignedhistory
(i. e. poetry) hath been to give some shadow of satisfactionto the mind
of man in those points whereinthe nature of things doth deny it . . . it
doth raise and erect the mind,by submittingthe shows of things to the
desires of the mind,whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto
the nature of things." This passage seems to be a firstadumbrationof
the later view that the scientificobserveris to submitto the discipline
of reality,whereas the poet is to feel more or less free to shatter this
sorryschemeof thingsand " then remouldit nearerto the heart's desire,"
to indulgein otherwords the romantictype of imagination.
29 Ober naive und sentimentalische
Dichtung,x, 506. He has the actual
phrase (den erschopften
Geschaftsmann).

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268

MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES

cessful; they are the translatiolninto genuine poetryof difficult

philosophicalabstractions. Yet the usual ronmantic
confusionis
inotenltirely
absent fromthese poems-that of puttingforthas a
a mere nostalgia. One's final
wise view of life what is at bottomn
ratinlgof Schiller's or any poetryshould at all eventsbe based
primarilyon the quality of the imaginationdisplayed and not
primarilyon its techniqueor outer formand still less on its explicit moralizinig. A work mnay
be, like Chateaubriand'sRene, a
masterpieceof techni(ue,it may end witha veryedifyingsermon
like that of PNreSoulO,and yet in its essencebe thoroughlyunethical; and that is because it is, in its ultimate imaginative
quality,an extremeexample of emotionalromanticism. The inwas thereforerightly
sertionof Rene in the Genius of Christianity
felt at the timne
to be highlyinco-ngruous.This at all events;3
the issue betweenProfessorLovejoy and myself. If the treatise
that ProfessorLovejoy takes to mark the most decisive single
turninlgpoinitin the historyof the romanticmovement,seemsto
me muchless important,the reasonis, as I have alreadysaid, that
the " culture" or Elysium to whichSchiller would have us press
forwalrd
has so much in commonimaginatively
withthe " nature"
or Arcadia of 1Rousseau;it is still aestheticanididyllic.
IRIvING BABBITT.
Harvard

Un?1iV(rsitly.

REPLY

TO PROFESSOR

BABBITT

I. Professor Babbitt attributes to me several " misapprehensions" of his meaning. An authoralone knowshis own initent;
a reviewercan but judge by his words. In Mr. Babbitt's replyI
note with satisfactionsome modification
of his previousstatement
of his position. I findno evidencethat the reviewmisrepresented
the opinionsexpressedin the book.
1. Mr. Babbittdisclaims" identifyincrormianticism
withRousseauism." The latter is only one of threetypesof romanticism;
and of this type Rousseau was not the firstbut only the most
significantrepresentative.-IfMr. Babbitthad honoredmyreview
with a more carefulreading,he would have seen that he is here
replyingto a criticismwThich
I did not make. My objectionto

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