heir strange mummeries, they have set the outstretched
fancy in amazement. A deep silence reigns behind this curtain; no one
once within it will answer those he has left without; all you can hear
is a hollow echo of your question, as if you shouted into a chasm. To
the other side of this curtain we are all bound: men grasp hold of it
as they pass, trembling, uncertain who may stand within it to receive
them, _quid sit id quod tantum morituri vident_. Some unbelieving
people there have been, who have asserted that this curtain did but
make a mockery of men, and that nothing could be seen because nothing
_was_ behind it: but to convince these people, the rest have seized
them, and hastily pushed them in.'[11]

[Footnote 11: _Der Geisterseher_, Schillers Werke, B. iv. p
350.]

The _Philosophic Letters_ paint the struggles of an ardent,
enthusiastic, inquisitive spirit to deliver itself from the harassing
uncertainties, to penetrate the dread obscurity, which overhangs the
lot of man. The first faint scruples of the Doubter are settled by the
maxim: 'Believe nothing but thy own reason; there is nothing holier
than truth.' But Reason, employed in such an inquiry, can do but half
the work: she is like the Conjuror that has pronounced the spell of
invocation, but has forgot the counter-word; spectres and shadowy
forms come crowding at his summons; in endless multitudes they press
and hover round his magic circle, and the terror-struck Black-artist
cannot lay them. Julius finds that on rejecting the primary dictates
of feeling, the system of dogmatical belief, he is driven to the
system of materialism. Recoiling in horror from this dead and
cheerless creed, he toils and wanders in the labyrinths of pantheism,
seeking comfort and rest, but finding none; till, baffled and tired,
and sick at heart, he seems inclined, as far as we can judge, to
renounce the dreary problem altogether, to shut the eyes of his too
keen understanding, and take refuge under the shade of Revelation. The
anxieties and errors of Julius are described in glowing terms; his
intellectual subtleties are mingled with the eloquence of intense
feeling. The answers of his friend are in a similar style; intended
not more to convince than to persuade. The whole work is full of
passion as well as acuteness; the impress of a philosophic and poetic
mind striving with all its vast energies to make its poetry and its
philosophy agree. Considered as exhibiting th