Alexander von Humboldt]

Art and poetry were directly joined to what was most noble in man;
they were represented to be the medium by means of which he first
awakens to the consciousness of that nature, reaching out beyond the
finite, which dwells within him. Both of them were thus placed upon
the height from which they really originate. To safeguard them upon
this height, to save them from being desecrated by every paltry and
belittling view, to rescue them from every sentiment which did not
spring from their purity, was really Schiller's aim, and appeared to
him as his true life-mission determined for him by the original
tendency of his nature.

His first and most urgent demands are, therefore, addressed to the
poet himself, from whom he requires not merely genius and talent
isolated, as it were, in their activity, but a mood which takes
possession of the entire soul and is in harmony with the sublimity of
his vocation; it must be not a mere momentary exaltation, but an
integral part of character. "Before he undertakes to influence the
best among his contemporaries he should make it his first and most
important business to elevate his own self to the purest and noblest
ideal of humanity." * * * To no one does Schiller apply this demand
more rigorously than to himself.

Of him it can truthfully be said that matters which bordered upon the
common or even upon the ordinary, never had the slightest hold upon
him; that he transferred completely the high and noble views which
filled his thoughts to his mode of feeling and his life; and that in
his compositions he was ever, with uniform force, inspired with a
striving for the ideal. This was true even of his minor productions.