He became absorbed in the spirit of classic times. The antiquity
of Greece was far dearer to him than that of Palestine, and his poetic
fancy was excited to a greater tension by the tales of heathen deities
than by the histories of the Bible. He was a devotee of Kant, and his
poetry was largely made up of that philosopher's metaphysics. Yet, in
Schiller's hand, abstractions became living pictures. He knew how to
speak clearly, and his popularity is evidence to the fact that his
generations of readers have plainly understood him.
While Schiller represented Kant in verse, Goethe did the same thing with
Schelling's philosophy. The influence of the latter poet on religion was
very pernicious. He expressed himself favorably of the Bible, but he
claimed that it could only educate the people up to a little higher
stage of intelligence and taste. He was intensely egotistic, and totally
indifferent to all religious belief. His false idolatry of art and his
enthusiasm arrayed for heathendom, in all the beautiful charms of the
most seductive poetry, had a tendency fatal to the cause of Christianity
and to all public and private virtue.
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