First and foremost, therefore, I everywhere trace the connection between literature and life. This is at once proved by the fact that, whereas earlier Danish literary controversies (that between Heiberg and Hauch, for example, or even the famous one between Baggesen and Oehlenschläger) were kept entirely within the domain of literature and dealt exclusively with literary principles, the controversy aroused by the first volume of this work has entailed, quite as much from the nature of the work as from the irrationality of its opponents, the discussion of a multitude of moral, social, and religious questions. The Danish reaction, feeling itself to be akin to the one I am about to depict and unmask, has attempted to suppress the movement which it recognised to be antagonistic to itself--but so far with little prospect of success. A French proverb says: _Nul prince n'a tué son successeur._ When, however, the connection between literature and life is thus emphasised, the delineations and interpretations of men and their books by no means produce what we may call drawing-room history of literature. I go down to the foundations of real life, and show how the emotions which find their expression in literature arise in the human heart. And this same human heart is no still pool, no idyllic mountain lake. It is an ocean, with submarine vegetation and terrible inhabitants. Drawing-room history of literature, like drawing-room poetry, sees in human life a drawing-room, a decorated ball-room--the furniture and the people alike polished, the brilliant illumination excluding all possibility of dark corners. Let those who choose to do so look at things thus; it is not my point of view. Just as the botanist must handle nettles as well as roses, so the student of literature must accustom himself to look, with the unflinching gaze of the naturalist or the physician, upon all the forms taken by human nature, in their diversity and their inward affinity. It makes the plant neither more nor less interesting that it smells sweet or stings; but the dispassionate interest of the botanist is often accompanied by the purely human pleasure in the beauty of the flower.