a definition! But the intent here is to refer all that seems to
transcend mundane categories, man's highest, his widest, his sublimest
intuitions and achievements, back to himself; he is his own source of
light and power.

[Footnote 8: _Anthropologie_, para. 87 c.]

Such an anthropocentric view of life and destiny in exalting man,
of course, thereby liberated him, not merely from ecclesiastical
domination, but also from those illusive fears and questionings, those
remote and imaginative estimates of his own intended worth and those
consequent exacting demands upon himself which are a part of the
religious interpretation of life. Humanistic writing is full of the
exulting sense of this emancipation. These superconsiderations do not
belong in the world of experience as the humanist ordinarily conceives
of it. Hence, man lives in an immensely contracted, but a very real
and tangible world and within the small experimental circumference of
it, he holds a far larger place (from one viewpoint, a far smaller one
from another) than that of a finite creature caught in the snare of
this world and yet a child of the Eternal, having infinite destinies.
The humanist sees man as freed from the tyranny of this supernatural
revelation and laws. He rejoices over man because now he stands,

"self-poised on manhood's solid earth
Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,
Fed from within with all the strength he needs."

It is this sense of independence which arouses in Goethe a perennial
enthusiasm. It is the greatest bliss, he says, that the humanist won
back for us. Henceforth, we must strive with all our power to keep it.