The Age of Kant and Goethe

Schiller knew the scope of the necessity of reason when he demanded that the true man should free himself from it; and Goethe was able to profess the cult of beauty, because for him the highest works of art were formed according to true, necessary laws of nature. The Romantics, however, leapt into the land of aesthetic freedom with a single bound, as it were; they did not conquer it laboriously, but declared themselves its owners by proclamations of power. Goethe, too, saw his ideal of duty in "loving what one commands oneself". But he was constantly striving to seek the true only in the sense of the deepest foundations of knowledge. And in this way, he also strove for true art.