essential difference between the metaphysician and the poet. And if a thorough re-investigation of this were not to reverse, perhaps, my previous conclusions, I would limit my definition of the difference to this, that the philosopher concerns himself with perceptions alone, and the poet, on the contrary, with sensations; while both require the same measure and cultivation of mental power. But to establish this would lead me too far astray from my immediate subject, and I trust to have shown already, by my previous arguments, that, even to form the calmest thinker, the pleasures of sense and fancy must have often played around the soul. But to pass from transcendental to psychological inquiries (where man as he appears is the object of our studies), would not he explore most deeply the genus which is richest in forms, and represent it most truly and vividly, to whose own sensations the fewest of these forms are strange?
Hence it is that the man who is thus developed displays the full beauty of his character when he enters into practical life—when, externally and internally, he enriches with a thousand new creations that which he has received. The analogy between the laws of plastic nature and those of intellectual creation, has been already noticed by a mind[1] of singular power of penetration, and established by striking proofs. But perhaps his exposition would have been still more interesting, and psychology enriched with the results of a more extended knowledge, if, instead of inquiring into the inscrutable development of the germ, the process of intellectual creation had been shown to be, as it were, the more exquisite flower and ethereal beauty of the corporeal. To extend our remarks:—with respect to the moral life, to that which seems to be the especial province of cold, abstract reason, we would observe that the idea of the sublime alone enables us to obey absolute and unconditional
- ↑ F. v. Dalberg: vom Bilden und Erfinden.
