, and
reader as well as writer find their chief interest therein. This is
because vulgar natures, if overstrained, can only be refreshed by
vacuity; and even a higher intelligence, when not sustained by a
proportional culture, can only rest from its work amidst sensuous
enjoyments, from which spiritual nature is absent.

Poetic genius ought to have strength enough to rise with a free and
innate activity above all the accidental hinderances which are
inseparable from every confined condition, to arrive at a representation
of humanity in the absolute plenitude of its powers; it is not, however,
permitted, on the other hand, to emancipate itself from the necessary
limits implied by the very idea of human nature; for the absolute only in
the circle of humanity is its true problem. Simple genius is not exposed
to overstep this sphere, but rather not to fill it entirely, giving too
much scope to external necessity, to accidental wants, at the expense of
the inner necessity. The danger for the sentimental genius is, on the
other hand, by trying to remove all limits, of nullifying human nature
absolutely, and not only rising, as is its right and duty, beyond finite
and determinate reality, as far as absolute possibility, or in other
terms to idealize; but of passing even beyond possibility, or, in other
words, dreaming. This fault--overstraining--is precisely dependent on
the specific property of the sentimental process, as the opposite defect,
inertia, depends on the peculiar operation of the simple genius. The
simple genius lets nature dominate, without restricting it; and as nature
in her particular phenomena is always subject to some want, it follows
that the simple sentiment will not be always exalted enough to resist the
accidental limitations of the present hour. The sentimental genius, on
the contrary, leaves aside the real world, to rise to the ideal and to
command its matter with free spontaneity. But while reason, according to
law, aspires always to the unconditional, so the sentimental genius will
not always remain calm enough to restrain itself uniformly and without
interruption within the conditions implied by the idea of human nature,
and to which reason must always, even in its freest acts, remain
attached. He could only confine himself in these conditions by help of a
receptivity proportioned to his free activity; but most commonly the
activity predominates over receptivity in the sentimental poet, as much
as r