when science is limited
to so little, nature is easily satisfied, and man only turns to savagery
when he is tortured by want. All nations that have a history have a
paradise, an age of innocence, a golden age. Nay, more than this, every
man has his paradise, his golden age, which he remembers with more or
less enthusiasm, according as he is more or less poetical. Thus
experience itself furnishes sufficient traits to this picture which the
pastoral idyl executes. But this does not prevent the pastoral idyl from
remaining always a beautiful and an encouraging fiction; and poetic
genius, in retracing these pictures, has really worked in favor of the
ideal. For, to the man who has once departed from simple nature, and who
has been abandoned to the dangerous guidance of his reason, it is of the
greatest importance to find the laws of nature expressed in a faithful
copy, to see their image in a clear mirror, and to reject all the stains
of artificial life. There is, however, a circumstance which remarkably
lessens the aesthetic value of these sorts of poetry. By the very fact
that the idyl is transported to the time that precedes civilization, it
also loses the advantages thereof; and by its nature finds itself in
opposition to itself. Thus, in a theoretical sense, it takes us back at
the same time that in a practical sense it leads us on and ennobles us.
Unhappily it places behind us the end towards which it ought to lead us,
and consequently it can only inspire us with the sad feeling of a loss,
and not the joyous feeling of a hope. As these poems can only attain
their end by dispensing with all art, and by simplifying human nature,
they have the highest value for the heart, but they are also far too poor
for what concerns the mind, and their uniform circle is too quickly
traversed. Accordingly we can only seek them and love them in moments in
which we need calm, and not when our faculties aspire after movement and
exercise. A morbid mind will find its cure in them, a sound soul will
not find its food in them. They cannot vivify, they can only soften.
This defect, grounded in the essence of the pastoral idyll, has not been
remedied by the whole art of poets. I know that this kind of poem is not
without admirers, and that there are readers enough who prefer an Amyntus
and a Daphnis to the most splendid masterpieces of the epic or the
dramatic muse; but in them it is less the aesthetical taste than the
feeling of an individual