and satisfy the vanity of literature by
means of so-called works of art." If philosophy is destroyed by
systematizing how much more so is poetry, which can exist only so long
as it is free. The instinct to make an end of everything, and wilfully
and arbitrarily to pen up what is not confined to time and space, is the
ugliest trait in human nature. Life, in whatever phase it may be, always
has a form, though sometimes one not to be seized with hands; it is
always in fermentation, never in putrefaction; but its form is lost when
we try to bring it into harmony with the tyrannical generalities which
are bequeathed from grandfather to grandchild; then it congeals, and the
stream that might have afforded us the most delicious bath can, at the
most, be transformed into a sledge-road. Protect yourself against the
sea but do not strive to hamper and dam up its movement; if this ever
succeeded, the sea would become a swamp, and all of you--not only the
sailors--would die a miserable death. To begin with, it is a misfortune
that human society requires the form of the State, which cannot be
traced back to any primitive foundation; for the individual tendencies
and developments that are most full of genius are thus nipped in the
bud, and it is an open question whether those that remain, which to be
sure are better protected against wind and weather inside the ramparts
and walls than elsewhere, can, even when yielding their most abundant
profits, make compensation for those that are held back and crushed.
Will you go even further than necessity forces you; will you compel the
spirit, even in its most peculiar sphere, to accept a constitution under
the lamblike innocent name of esthetics? Of what advantage will it be to
you? You can then, to be sure, lawfully scold and punish; today you can
lock up a sentiment in the guardhouse for drunkenness: tomorrow you can
drag off a thought to imprisonment for offense against your sovereign
majesty; and the day after you can send a phantasy to the mad house on
account of its all too bold flight. Life is its own law and its own
rule, but you never want to adore the god until after you have crucified
him. As long as the tree is green you cut off its branches, and out of
the dried hewn-down one you make, not an axle for your mill-wheel, but
an idol.

What Wienbarg says of Uhland, the ballad-writer, is very pretty, but it
was refuted before it was even written. Uhland, the ballad-writer, is
not the