Idealism  of  Goethe  and  Schiller         313

imaged,  it  is  always  thought  of  as  attainable  only
through  a  strenuous  grapple  with  the  realities  of  this
life.  Thus  the  essential  spirit  of  the  poem  is  the  spirit
of  energetic,  hopeful  endeavor.  Its  doctrine  is,  to
quote  the  words  of  Kuno  Francke,  that  ' '  only  through
work  are  we  delivered  from  the  slavery  of  the  senses  ' ' ;
that  ' '  the  very  trials  and  sufferings  of  mankind  bring
out  its  divine  nature  and  insure  its  ultimate  transition
^o  an  existence  of  ideal  harmony  and  beauty  ".'

The  doctrine,  in  its  essence,  was  dear  to  Goethe,  as
well  as  to  Schiller,  and  takes  us  into  the  holy-of-holies
of  their  joint  philosophy.  What  else  did  Goethe  mean
by  his  oft-reiterated  preachment  of  renunciation,  and
Iby  his  well-known  verses  about  '  weaning  oneself  from  ^
the  half  and  living  resolutely  in  the  whole,  the  good  and
the  beautiful  '  ?  In  his  excellent  book  upon  Diderot
Mr,  John  Morley  speaks  somewhere  of  ' '  that  affecta-
tion of  culture  with  which  the  great  Goethe  infected
part  of  the  world  ".  Let  it  not  be  forgotten,  however,
in  our  latter-day  contempt  of  culture,  that  the  Weimar
poets  were  great  workers,  and  also,  in  their  way,  great
fighters.  They  did  not  turn  their  attention — at  least
not  directly — to  the  crushing  of  the  Infamous,  nor  to
any  battle  against  social  or  political  wrong.  They
fought  rather  for  sanity,  for  good  ^rt,  for  philosophy;
for  those  things  which  go  to  enrich  and  broaden  the
life  of  the  individual.  It  was  a  good  fight, — the  best
which,  at  their  time,  with  their  gifts,  they  could  possi-
bly have  engaged  in.
