Thus a sympathy with the past, a new interest in humanity as such, marks Romanticism. (3) Just because classicism sought to express the idea of beauty in definite and objective form, it was possible to lay down fixed canons of pro cedure and so to render the result formal, pre cise and ahnost mechanical. Romanticism, how ever, aims to represent what is inner and sub jective, and, therefore, necessarily protests against making art stilted and formal by the application of external rules and mechanical standards. Art, the Romanticists declare, must spring from the untrammeled expression of the free spirit of the man of genuis. ((The will or caprice of the poet)) as Schlegel says, ((admits no law above itself?) The Romantic Movement.— The romantic movement may best be understood if we regard it as a part of the general intellectual revolu tion of the 19th century, and as one in spirit with the historical and scientific spirit of mod ern times. The entire spiritual attitude of mod ern life, as contrasted with that of the 18th century, may be characterized as a new con sciousness of infinite possibilities and boundless aspirations. The spirit knows itself as infinite and is also conscious of the infinite task set for the individual through its own demand for ex pression and realization. The new tendency turns away in disdain from the mechanical con ceptions and formal syllogisms in which the 18th century had self-complacently summed up the universe, it laughs to scorn the unintelli gent and formal imitation of classical models that bases itself on ancient canons; it denounces the ethical principle of prudence; it declares that the infinitely mysterious law of life cannot be comprehended by the principle of self-love; it refuses to believe in a transcendent God. The new movement is thus romantic through and through, filled with a sense of mystery and wonder, with the love of adventure and dis covery, and with the buoyant spirit of aspira tion. As Wordsworth says: eIn that dawning age 'twas bliss to be alive, but to be young was very heaven.' This tendency to advance to new achievements manifested itself in many and various directions. In philosophy it led to a new and fruitful attempt to comprehend in more adequate terms God, nature and the place and significance of man's life in the universe. The result of this is seen in the systems of Kant and the German idealists. On another side the new interest in man and the affairs of man's life has given rise to the modern his torical movement which has made its influence felt in every department of thought and cul ture. It is this historical interest, united with the Romantic spirit of adventure and discovery, which is just the assertion of the confidence of Reason in itself, that has called into being the evolutionary sciences of nature. The concept of evolution has transformed the older view of nature, just as it did our view of man when it was earlier applied to illumine his social, ethical and religious life. For evolution is just an attempt to explain the world by showing the relations between things as parts of a single living process. It, therefore, always emphasizes organic relationships and views things as parts or stages in a dynamic process, instead of taking each thing as something static, an ele ment existing in isolation as something in itself independent and having only external relations to other things. The Romantic movement in art and literature must also be regarded as an ex pression in different fields of essentially the same attitude of self-assertion and consciousness of the creative movement of life that is mani fested in philosophy and the new sciences of history and biology.
Romanticism in England.— In England a new spirit was perceptible in literature soon after the middle of the 18th century. This new movement, however, was not so intense or so fundamental in scope as its counterpart in Ger many, which began a little later. For the intro duction of a natural literature into England, expressing a sympathy with nature and an interest in the past, while disregarding the rigid canons of the Augustan Age, was in a way but the restoration of the healthy natural traditions that had expressed themselves in Chaucer and Spenser, in Shakespeare and Mil ton, and in the folk-songs and ballads, which were collected and edited by Thomas Percy in his (Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,' in 1765. It was thus not marked by the keen sense of opposition to the prevaihng system that characterized the tendency in Germany, and at a later time, also in France. Moreover,
perhaps for this very reason, it did not penetrate so deeply into the spiritual life of the people, or show its effects markedly in all departments of intellectual life, as in Germany. It appears mainly as a literary movement, with which is connected some new tendencies in painting, and also as a revival of interest in Gothic architecture, which Horace Walpole did much to promote. But the movement did not involve a fundamental transformation of philosophical and scientific conceptions. This transformation came about at a later period during the 19th century, and was largely the result of the in fluence of German thought as represented by Coleridge and Carlyle, aided by Darwin's dis covery and applications of the doctrine of evolu tion. The names of Gray, Cowper, Scott and Burns are usually placed among the English Romanticists, as well as those of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Byron, Shelley and Keats. A little later we have the revival of interest in Dante, which culminates in the pre-Raphaelite movement.
The Romantic School in Germany.— Leas ing stands as the first to challenge the canons of the classic art and literature. Herder is at once the pioneer of the modern historical method and one of the first to appreciate the value of what is natural and spontaneous in literature. Influenced no doubt by the publica tion of Percy's (Reliques,) he made a collection of the folk-songs of Germany. In Goethe's (Werther) and Rousseau's (Confessions) we have two books of nearly the same date that show many of the marks of extreme Romanti cism. The name ((Romantic school,) however, is usually applied to a group of men whose main centre of activity was first at Weimar and Jena and afterward to some extent at Berlin, and whose work extends from about 1775 or '80 to 1806. The main names of this school are the brothers Friedrich and A. W. Schlegel, the philosopher Schelling, Novalis (whose real name was Friedrich von Hardenberg), Ludwig Tieck and the theologian Schleiermacher. The main result of movement was philosophical and esthetic, though it led to some important results in the. way of historical investigations. Heine Immermann, Freytag and von Scheffel all exhibit the characteristic Romanticist fond ness for the picturesque and the medieval. Another group of men —Uhland, the brothers Grimm, von Arnim, J. Gorres and Brentano, who represent a more distinctly literary move ment with strong national characteristics — are often called the younger Romanticists, whose centre of activity was at Heidelberg, where their organ, the Zeitiing fur Einsiedler, was published.
Romanticism in France.— We have seen that Rousseau may in a sense be called one of the earliest Romanticists. As a result of the Revolution and the prolonged Napoleonic wars, literature received little attention in France dur ing the years that were most fruitful in Ger many and England. Chateaubriand and Mme. de Stael are sometimes said to be the fore runners of Romanticism in France. But the tradition of classicism was strongly entrenched, and even Victor Hugo at first adhered to this standard. But in 1826 in the 'Odes and Bal lads,' and in the following year in the preface to the play entitled 'Cromwell,' he declared his allegiance to Romanticism, and at once became the leader in a new cause into which he threw himself with all the fervor of his enthusiastic nature. Besides Hugo, the principal French Romanticists are Alf. de Musset, Ch. Nodier, George Sand, Th. Gautier and Balzac.
Royce, 'The Spirit of Mod ern Philosophy' (New York 1892), Lecture 6; Brandes, George, 'The Romantic School in Germany' (1902) ; 'Die romantische Schule in Frankreich' (1897) ; Gautier, Th., (Histoire du romantisme' (Paris 1872) ; Hegel, (Aesthetik,) (see Sections on Classical Art and Romantic Art; English translations by W. M. Bryant, and in abridged form by B. Bosanquet, London 1886) ; Hedge, F. H., 'Classic and Romantic' (in volume entitled 'Martin Luther and Other Essays,' 1888) ; Heine, H., 'Die romantische Schule' (1833; Eng. trans. 1882) ; Boyesen, H. H., 'Essays on German Literature' (1892) ; Beers, H. A., 'A History of English Romanti cism in the 18th Century' (New York 1899);