To assign to poetry, among human endeavors, the lofty and serious
place of which I have spoken above, to defend it from the petty point
of view of those who, mistaking its dignity, and the pedantic attitude
of those who, mistaking its peculiar character, regard it only as a
trifling adornment and embellishment of life or else ask an immediate
moral effect and teaching from it--this, as one cannot repeat too
often, is deeply rooted in the German habit of thought and feeling.
Schiller in his poetry gave utterance--in his own individual manner,
however--to whatever his German nature had implanted in him, to the
harmony which rang out to him from the depths of the language, the
mysterious effect of which he so cleverly perceived and knew how to
use so masterfully. * * *

The deeper and truer trend of the German resides in his highly
developed sensibility which keeps him closer to the truths of nature,
in his inclination to live in the world of ideas and of emotions
dependent upon them, and, in fact, in everything which is connected
therewith. * * *

A favorite idea which often engaged Schiller's attention was the need
of educating the crude natural man--as he understood him--through art,
before he could be left to attain culture through reason. Schiller has
enlarged upon this theme on many occasions, both in prose and verse.
His imagination dwelt by preference upon the beginnings of
civilization in general, upon the transition from the nomadic life to
the agricultural, upon the covenant established in naïve faith with
pious Mother Earth, as he so beautifully expresses it.

Whatever mythology offered here as kindred material, he grasped with