the market-place of Wittenberg, and
preached a doctrine as hostile to art as was that of Eusebius and
Chrysostom. There was no longer any hope for the religion of beauty.

Nevertheless, under the influence of the revival of ancient art which
arose with Winckelmann towards the close of the last century, a gospel
of esthetics was preached. Its apostles were chiefly Germans, and among
them Schiller and Goethe are not inconspicuous names. The latter, before
his long life was closed, began to see the emptiness of such teachings,
and the violence perpetrated on the mind by forcing on the religious
sentiment the food fit only for the esthetic emotions.

The highest conception of individual perfection is reached in a
character whose physical and mental powers are symmetrically trained,
and always directed by conscious reason to their appropriate ends.
Self-government, founded on self-knowledge, wards off the pangs of
disappointment by limiting ambition to the attainable. The affections
and emotions, and the pleasures of sensation as well, are indulged in or
abstained from, but never to the darkening of the intellect. All the
talents are placed at usury; every power exercised systematically and
fruitfully with a consecration to a noble purpose.

This is the religion of culture. None other ranks among its adherents so
many great minds; men, as Carlyle expresses it, of much religiosity, if
of little religion. The ideal is a taking one. Such utter self-reliance,
not from ignorance, but from the perfection of knowledge, was that which
Buddha held up to his followers: "Self is the God of self; who else
should be the God?" In this century Goethe, Wordsworth, beyond all
others Wilhelm von Humboldt, have set forth this ideal. Less strongly
intellectual natures, as Maine de Biran, De Senancourt, and Matthew
Arnold, listen with admiration, but feel how unknown to the mass of
human kind must remain the tongue these masters speak.

Thus did the religious sentiment seek its satisfaction in the
idealization, first of physical force, then of form, and last of mental
force, but in each case turned away unsatisfied. Wherein did these
ideals fail? The first mentioned in exalting power over principle, might
over right. As was well said by the philosophical Novalis: "The ideal of
morality has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of physical
strength, of the most vigorous life. Through it man is transformed into
a reasoning beast, whose brutal