f love
in the soul upwards to God, a liberation from the bonds of sense, a
purification of man, a moral art. On this reposes the religious
consecration of the Platonic spirit and of that of Schiller.

Issuing from the philosophical school of Kant, and imbued with the
antagonism of the age against constituted authorities, it is natural that
Schiller should be a rationalist in his religious views. It has been
justly said of him that while Goethe's system was an apotheosis of nature
Schiller's was an apotheosis of man.

Historically he was not prepared enough to test and search the question
of evidence as applied to divine things handed down by testimony, and his
Kantian coloring naturally disposed him to include all religions within
the limits of pure reason, and to seek it rather in the subject than in
anything objective.

In conclusion, we may attempt to classify and give Schiller his place in
the progress of the world's literary history. Progress is no doubt a law
of the individual, of nations, and of the whole race. To grow in
perfection, to exist in some sort at a higher degree, is the task imposed
by God on man, the continuation of the very work of God, the complement
of creation. But this moral growth, this need of increase, may, like all
the forces of nature, yield to a greater force; it is an impulsion rather
than a necessity; it solicits and does not constrain. A thousand
obstacles stay its development in individuals and in societies; moral
liberty may retard or accelerate its effects. Progress is therefore a
law which cannot be abrogated, but which is not invariably obeyed.

Nevertheless, in proportion to the increase of the mass of individuals,
the caprices of chance and of liberty neutralize each other to allow the
providential action that presides over our destinies to prevail. Looking
at the same total of the life of the world, humanity undoubtedly
advances: there are in our time fewer moral miseries, fewer physical
miseries, than were known in the past.

Consequently art and literature, which express the different states of
society, must share in some degree in this progressive march. But there
are two things in literary work: on the one hand the ideas and social
manners which it expresses, on the other the intelligence, the feeling,
the imagination of the writer who becomes its interpreter. While the
former of these elements tends incessantly to a greater perfection, the
latter is subject to all the