will to act dutifully, steadfastly, nobly, divinely; and therefore the world is duty solidified to oar senses. The romantic spirit says from the very start: The world is indeed the world as self-consciousness builds it; but the true self is the self that men of genius, poets, constructive artists know; hence the real world is such as to satisfy the demands of the man of genius, the artist. Emotion, heart-experience, longings, divinations of the soul, are the best instruments for the philosopher. Dream out your world. It is after all but a dream of the inner life, this vast universe about us. The noblest dreamer will be the man to understand it the best.
The distinguishing features of this group of young men were then, to sum up, so far, these: they proposed in common to create a new literary movement; and whilst they were rather speculative metaphysicians than true poets, they were nevertheless rather romancers than soberly constructive philosophers. They therefore suggest rather than complete. Their lesson is of more importance to us than are their systems. At the start, that is, in the years about 1795, they were under the influence of Fichte, but his ethical idealism soon grew too stern for them. They interpreted the world rather in terms of sentiment and of bold divination than in terms of the moral law. For the rest, external nature interested them, even in their most idealistic moods, more than it had interested Fichte. Of course, the external world is for them too only mind solidified, only a mass of ideas seen from without. But they are dissatisfied with Fichte’s moral law as a full account of the essence of this outer mirage of our senses. Art, they hold, is as suggestive as morality for the speculative thinker. Nature is therefore a work of unconscious art, a form which the great Genius of the world gives to his experiences. God is an artist, a poet, who pours out the wealth of his beautiful life in all the world of sense. Of this God, we too are embodiments;
