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Or is it a reason against the hypothesis that so much time would have been lost to me? Lost? And how much then should I miss? Is not a whole Eternity mine? An outline of the life of Schiller will be found prefixed to the translation of "Wilhelm Tell" in the volume of Continental Dramas in The Harvard Classics.
Such activity seemed to him a recreation rather than an effort, and was manifested most conspicuously in conversation, for which Schiller appeared to have a natural aptitude.
The letters of Schiller are pervaded by a lofty and ideal tone. The brothers Schlegel developed that taste for universal literature which had been introduced by Herder. His poems are elegant, but not remarkable. His lectures on "The Philosophy of History" were evidently written with political and religious purposes.
A new man, utterly defiant of the devil and all 'his works and pomps, I am ready and eager to take my place once more in the battle of life; atone for the miserable time gone by; to take again the place in the world I had forfeited, bearing ever in my breast the beautiful maxims of the German poet and philosopher, Schiller: 'Look not sorrowfully into the past; it comes not back again.
I occupy myself with him daily, working at the colossal bust. It costs trouble, but it gives me joy, because the colossal image will make an indescribable impression. But it was not only his friends who were thus affected by his personality. Madame de Stael said of him in her famous book on Germany, which was published in 1813: Schiller was as admirable for his virtues as for his talents.
True it is, and nobody was more aware of that fact than Schiller himself in after years, the characters of the three Moors, father and sons, are mere impossibilities; and some readers, in whom the judicious acquaintance with human life in its realities has outrun the sensibilities, are so much shocked by these hypernatural phenomena, that they are incapable of enjoying the terrific sublimities which on that basis of the visionary do really exist.
Shakespeare, we may fancy, wrote with rapidity; but not till he had thought with intensity,... no easy writer he. Neither was Milton one of the mob of gentlemen that write with case. Goethe tells us he "had nothing sent to him in his sleep," no page of his but he knew well how it came there. Schiller "konnte nie fertig werden" never could get done.
Schiller still gives to all this view of truth the name of 'Humanism, but, for this doctrine too, the name of pragmatism seems fairly to be in the ascendant, so I will treat it under the name of pragmatism in these lectures. Such then would be the scope of pragmatism first, a method; and second, a genetic theory of what is meant by truth. And these two things must be our future topics.
His philosophical and physiological pedantry for Schiller endows him lavishly with the special lore of the medical man obfuscates his vision for the ordinary facts of human nature. He has upon the whole a more intelligible motive for his rascality than Iago, but he is much less interesting, much less picturesque, for simple lack of mother-wit.
The autumn passed in quiet work devoted mainly to his 'Defection of the Netherlands'. The Duke of Weimar came home for a few days towards the ist of October, but immediately went away again to Holland. Schiller did not even see him. Evidently there was nothing to be hoped for immediately in that quarter; he would have to rely upon himself. But he was now in demand.
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