power which he exhibits reminds us also of our
own, and that is why we then feel something which upraises our spiritual
force. Thus it is only the idea of the possibility of an absolutely free
will which makes the real exercise of this will in us charming to the
aesthetic feeling.

We shall be still more convinced when we think how little the poetic
force of impression which is awakened in us by an act or a moral
character is dependent on their historic reality. The pleasure which we
take in considering an ideal character will in no way be lessened when we
come to think that this character is nothing more than a poetic fiction;
for it is on the poetic truth, and not on historic truth, that every
aesthetic impression of the feelings rest. Moreover, poetic truth does
not consist in that this or that thing has effectually taken place, but
in that it may have happened, that is to say, that the thing is in itself
possible. Thus the aesthetic force is necessarily obliged to rest in the
first place in the idea of possibility.

Even in real subjects, for which the actors are borrowed from history, it
is not the reality of the simple possibility of the fact, but that which
is guaranteed to us by its very reality which constitutes the poetic
element. That these personages have indeed existed, and that these
events have in truth taken place, is a circumstance which can, it is
true, in many cases add to our pleasure, but that which it adds to it is
like a foreign addition, much rather unfavorable than advantageous to the
poetical impression.

It was long thought that a great service was rendered to German poetry by
recommending German poets to treat of national themes. Why, it was
asked, did Greek poetry have so much power over the mind? Because it
brought forward national events and immortalized domestic exploits. No
doubt the poetry of the ancients may have been indebted to this
circumstance for certain effects of which modern poetry cannot boast; but
do these effects belong to art and the poet? It is small glory for the
Greek genius if it had only this accidental advantage over modern genius;
still more if it were necessary for the poets, in order to gain this
advantage, to obtain it by this conformity of their invention with real
history! It is only a barbarous taste that requires this stimulant of a
national interest to be captivated by beautiful things; and it is only a
scribbler who borrows from matter a force to which he