One  sees  from  this  that  Schiller  is  halting  between


2  34  Historical  Writings

the  poetic  and  the  scientific  view  of  the  past,  uncertain
which  way  to  set  his  face.  The  poet  in  him  is  inclined
to  idealize  the  brave  days  of  old  and  to  mourn  that  the
ancient  giants  are  no  more.  At  the  same  time  he  finds
that  the  struggle  of  the  Low  Countries,  while  not
'heroic',  was  very  remarkable,  very  instructive  and
very  inspiring.  From  this  observation  it  is  but  a  step
to  the  recognition  of  the  truth  that  it  is  his  own  con-
ventional notion  of  '  heroism  '  that  needs  revising ;  that
the  giants  of  yore  were  no  taller  than  those  of  to-day
and  that  the  world's  supply  of  courage  and  devotion  is
not  running  low.  It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  the
sentence  beginning,  '  So  then  the  strength  they  mani-
fested',  was  omitted  by  Schiller  from  the  edition  of
1 80 1,  possibly  because  the  horrors  of  the  Revolution
had  put  him  out  of  humor  with  fighting.  But  he  might
well  have  allowed  the  words  to  stand.  Their  truth
was  soon  to  be  memorably  proved  by  the  German
uprising  against  Napoleon.
A  German  writer '  remarks  correctly  that  Schiller
occupies  with  Kant  a  middle  stage  between  the  older
pragmatic  historians,  upon  whom  Faust.^  pours  kis
scathing  ridicule,  and  the  later  school  of  Ranke,  whose
principle  was  to  extinguish  self  and  simply  tell  what
happened  and  how.  He  does  not  moralize  like  his
predecessors,  nor  is  he  guilty  of  treating  the  distant
past  with  patronizing  condescension.  At  the  same
time  he  wishes  to  instruct  and  does  not  hesitate  to  point

1  Otto  Brahm,  "  Schiller",  II,  209.
