ommon man to be the only arbiter of literary values, were, each in
his own way, upsetting the control of an artificial "classicism."
Immanuel Kant, whose deep and dynamic thinking led to a revolution
comparable to a cosmic upheaval in the geological world, compelled his
generation to discover a vast new moral system utterly disconcerting
to the shallow complacency of those who had no sense of higher values
than "practical efficiency."

When, in 1794, Goethe and Schiller, now matured and fully seasoned by
a deep-going classical and philosophical discipline, joined their
splendid forces and devoted their highest powers to the building up of
a comprehensive esthetic philosophy, the era was fully come for new
constructive efforts on German soil. Incalculably potent was the
ferment liberated by Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister_ (1795-1796)--its
attacking the problem of life from the emotional and esthetic side;
its defense of the "call" of the individual as outweighing the whole
social code; its assertion that genius outranks general laws, and
imagination every-day rules; its abundance of "poetic" figures taking
their part in the romance.

The birth of the Romantic School can be pretty definitely set at about
1796; its cradle was in the quaint university town of Jena, at that
time the home of Schiller and his literary-esthetic enterprises, and
only a few miles away from Goethe in Weimar. Five names embody about
all that was most significant in the earlier movement: Fichte, the
brothers Friedrich and Wilhelm Schlegel, Tieck, and Novalis.

The discussion of Fichte belonging to another division of this work,
it is enough to recall here that he was already professor of
philosophy at Jena when the Schlegel brothers made their home there
in 1796, and that it was while there that he published his _Doctrine
of Science_, the charter of independence of the Romantic School,
announcing the annihilation of physical values, proclaiming the soul
as above things perceived, the inner spirit as that alembic in which
all objects are produced. With almost insolent freshness Fichte
asserted a re-valuation of all values: what had been "enlightenment"
was now to be called shallowness; "ancient crudities" were to be
reverenced as deeper perceptions of truth; "fine literature" was to be
accounted a frivolous thing. Fichte made a stirring appeal to young
men, especially, as being alone able to perceive the meaning of
science and poetry.

To take part i