THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



the poet of freedom, dared to carry freedom openly into the land 

 of dreams and of shadows ; then there arose under his hand the 

 dreams and shadows of the ideal. 



In view of the great influence that Schiller's idealism has 

 had in the spread of Kant's practical moral philosophy, 

 we may for a moment consider it in contrast with the 

 realistic views of Goethe. 



The profound opposition of the views of the two great- 

 est poets of the classical period of German literature is 

 rooted deep in their natures. This has been proved so 

 often and so thoroughly, and has so frequently been 

 represented as the complementary quality of the two 

 poets, that I need merely recall it here. As for Goethe, 

 I have, in my General Morphology, shown his historical 

 importance in connection with the theory of evolution 

 and the system of monism. With all his versatile oc- 

 cupations, this great genius found time to devote to the 

 morphological study of organisms, and to establish his 

 comprehensive biological theories on this empirical basis. 

 His discovery of the metamorphosis of plants and his 

 vertebral theory of the skull justify us in classifying him 

 as one of the chief forerunners of Darwin. When I 

 dealt v/ith this in the fourth chapter of the History of 

 Creation, I pointed out how great an influence these 

 morphological studies, together with his idea of evohi- 

 tion, had on the realism of his philosophy. They led 

 him direct to monism and to an admiration of Spinoza's 

 monistic pantheism, Schiller had neither great interest 

 nor clear insight for these studies. His idealistic phi- 

 losophy disposed him rather to Kant's dualistic meta- 

 physics and to an acceptance of the three central mys- 

 teries — God, soul, and freedom. Both Schiller and 

 Goethe had a thorough knowledge of anthropology and 

 psychology. But the anatomic and physiological studies 

 that Schiller made as a military surgeon had very little 



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