HUMANISM AND REALISM. 557 
portion of science so necessary for an educated woman, destined 
to bea wife and a mother, being only treated as of secondary 
importance. The application of realism to the highest branches 
of art and literature has scarcely even been mentioned, though 
no great painter, sculptor, philosopher, or even dramatic writer, 
could conceive or execute their great classical creations with- 
out it. 
When in the renaissance of art, immortal artists like Leon- 
ardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo,and Raphael, created their sublime 
works, it was only by the adaptation of pure realism, or in other 
words, by being truthful not only in conception but alsoin form. 
They studied perspective, the laws of light and shade, and 
especially anatomy, with great perseverance, and it was only by 
those means that they could give to their works that perfection 
we still admire in them. 
I wish to allude also to two immortal men, both born 
towards the middle of the sixteenth century, Francis Bacon 
and William Shakespeare. The former united in a remarkable 
degree the understanding of the ancients with the scientific 
knowledge of his own time; and the greatest poet of all times 
was not unacquainted with the teachings of realism, as every 
page of his works reveals to us. To come to more recent times, 
we meet Kant and Alexander von Humbold, in whom the 
circle of human knowledge, classicism and humanism, were 
united in a harmonious whole. Again, Goethe, the greatest 
poet that Germany ever possessed, who had formed his elevated 
and pure style principally from the stucy of the ancients, was at 
the same time a Scientific man of great eminence, so that in his 
case too, both disciplines can claim him as their disciple. So real- 
ism and humanism must go hand in hand in order to reach per- 
fection, not only in the human mind but in its creations. If the 
follower of one wishes his own subject to reign exclusively, and 
despises the other branch, he will remain narrow-minded, and 
never reach the true balance of knowledge, only obtainable by a 
due regard for both disciplines. 
If imagination, idealism in philosophy, the desire to know 
ourselves and the feelings implanted in our hearts, if everything. 
not explicable by aid of the microscope, the scalpel, chemical 
analysis, or the geological hammer, is to be scouted, then I say 
it would be far better to have less realism and more humanism ; 
but if both disciplines will work together, will combine in the 
investigation of what surrounds us, as well as what we possess 
in ourselves, then the human race will have achieved a great 
victory ; the artificial barriers will fall, and knowledge, based 
upon inner and outer consciousness, will reign supreme, a 
guiding star to our fortunate successors on this beautiful and 
bountiful earth, 
