318 THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 



" gleams from the lamp of life itself." Schiller's youth- 

 ful philosophy disclosed this principle of his nature. 

 Above the actual world, with its suffering, above " this 

 dream of warring frogs and mice," this life of frivolity, a 

 lofty spiritual world rises in glorious perfection, to 

 which he ascribes the fulfilment of every ideal of love, 

 friendship, joy, and freedom. But this beautiful world, 

 already threatened by Voltaire, vanished before the 

 chill breath of the destroyer of ideals — Kant. Schiller 

 expressed his pain in the loss of the ideal in his Gods of 

 Greece. That noble blooming time of Nature represents 

 to him the flowering of his own youthful idealism; and 

 when he bewails " all the fair blossoms falling before the 

 blasts of winter," much that is personal is hidden in the 

 words. 



The ideal is only a dream, a beautiful chimera, but 

 need not, therefore, be lost to us, for we may still enjoy 

 the ideal in play; and with this conception, the poet 

 rises to new flights which open the classic period of his 

 creation. 



It is necessary to apprehend this fact clearly in or- 

 der to understand the great ethical power of Schiller's 

 ^Esthetics, which is for him not merely a new intellec- 

 tual discipline, but, above all, a new victory of ethical 

 personality. Being denied metaphysical ideals, he di- 

 rects his whole ethical force to the realm of beauty, 

 and feels that in virtue of his art he is a priest of hu- 

 manity, whose honour is intrusted to his care. In beau- 

 tiful unreality he finds again all that he dreamed in 

 youth, harmony of feeling and impulse, happiness, free- 

 dom, and the highest perfection of mankind. His meta- 

 physical idealism comes back to him in the form of 

 aesthetic idealism. 



Inquiring more closely into the nature of this aeg* 



