Campaigner

Love and reason are identical; love is the emotion of If the universe's lawfulness consists in a succession
the schb'neSeele, the emotion that moves the creative of higher orderings, then genius's creative activity--
genius, In "On Grace and Dignity" Schiller writes: which extends the very principles that regulated the
previous orderings is the singularity that effects the
Hence, the only free sentiment is that of love, for transition from one order to a higher one. A person's
its pure stream flows from the fountainhead of creative contribution is not his own private matter.
freedom, from our divine nature. This is not the "Whatever one man acquires in the domain of truth,
small and lowly man who measures himself he has acquired for all humanity," says Schiller in the
against what is great and lofty; nor is it the mind "World History," for "among thinking beings there
giddily gazing up at reason's taw--it is absolute exists an intimate sharing of the mind's possessions."
greatnessitself, which recreates itself in grace and Human creative activity is also the sole preconbeauty
and is consummated in morality; it is the dition enabling freedom to alter the actual course of
lawgiver himself, the God within us, which sports world history. For, without individual creativity, the
with its own image in the sensuous world. The geometry determining any current ordering of the
soul, forever obliged to give homage to love, thus universe is governed by the same laws as in nature,
becomes dissolved into love, for here there is no- i.e., by pure necessity, where any development is
thing to set limits, since thereis nothingaboveabso- conditioned by the principle of cause and effect. Thus,
lutegreatness,and sincegrace and beauty are where without an intervention to expand _those laws, this
sensuousness,the only potential source of limits, development is in principle determined and hence
comes into harmony with the mind's ideas.... predictable. But here man arrives at the decisive
Whereas the conscience-stricken person lives point, because his freedom seems to defy the course of
in constant fear of encountering the lawgiver in necessity; suddenly his own actions determine everyhimself
or in the outside world and regards thing that happens.
everything great and excellent as a threat, the For example, Schiller demanded that drama--
schb'neSeele knows no greater fortune than to see which for him was simply a poetic compression of
the holiness within himself emulated or realized mankind's great purposes--must always portray just
outside himself, and to embrace the material such a critical moment. It is true that in drama, as in
world in undying friendship. Love is simultane- history, man's actions set the wheels of fate into
ously the most generous and the most selfishthing motion, such that the course of future events unfolds
in nature; the former, because she receives noth- independently and out of his control. This unfolding,
ing from her object but gives everything to it, however, compels him to make yet further decisions,
since pure mind can only give, not receive; the around which all the dramatic tension becomes folatter,
because it is always her own self that she cused. Schiller calls this critical phase the punctum
seeksout and cherishesin her object, saliens (the "jumping point").
That is the point which appears time and again in
Freedom, reason, beauty and love are thus con- both history and individual lives, when a person is
cepts of the same order; they are only different free to either give up his freedom or shape the next
shadings of the same conception. The feeling of love higher geometry of lawfulness. Freedom, therefore,
a person experiences when he strives to perfect a does not mean choosing between various alternatives;
beloved other is the same fundamental emotional rather," it means using reason to create a higher
force that impels creative genius into creative activity, geometry which can then generate an entirely new
A person who feels and acts in this way has made succession of wholly different alternatives. Self-coneternity
into a part of himself; he becomes actual sciousness that the basis of his identity lies in this
infinity. Schiller refers to this state as "the enchant- principle of expansion is, therefore, the genius's key
ment of Platonic love, which lacks only the perma- to grasping the lawfulness of the universe.
nence of blissful immortality" actual infinity. A thousands-year-long fight has raged between
Knowledge of the unity of freedom, reason, Platonist and Aristotelians over whether, in principle,
beauty and love was shared by all the great Neopla- a single human mind can encompass the entire knowltonic
poets Dante, Petrarch, Schiller and Poe. edge of his era. All subspecies of Aristotelians deny
Without this unity no truly creative act is possible, this; in our own so-called modern times in particuand
thus even the most gifted misanthrope could larly, our little brotgelehrte professors maintain that
never become a genius so long as he does not renounce knowledge has increased so vastly over the past two
his hatred of humanity, centuries that only an ever-increasing army of spe-
CAMPAIGNER/June 1980 31