_Return_ to perfection is, in art, a return to the lawlessness of genius, to the stage at which the artist may do one thing, or may do another which is exactly the opposite. In life it is the retrogression of idleness, for he who is idle goes back, back to passive pleasure. In philosophy it is the return to intuitive beliefs, beliefs to which Schlegel applies the name of religion; which religion in its turn leads back to Catholicism. As far as nature and history are concerned, it is retrogression towards the conditions of the primeval Paradise.[3] Thus it is the central idea of Romanticism itself--retrogression--which explains how it was that even the heaven-storming _Lucinde_, like all the other heaven-stormers of the Romanticists, had not the slightest practical outcome. [1] "Pedantry asked Fancy for a kiss; she sent him to Sin; audaciously but impotently he embraces Sin; she bears him a dead child, by name Lucinde." [2] "A hunter blew into his horn, and all that he blew the wind carried away." [3] A. Ruge: _Gesammelte Schriften_, i. 328, &c. VI ROMANTIC PURPOSELESSNESS In _Lucinde_, then, as in a nutshell, are to be found all the theories which, later in the history of Romanticism, are developed and illustrated by examples. In such an essay as that on the Instinct of Change by the Æsthete in Kierkegaard's _Enten-Eller_ ("Either-Or") idleness is systematised. "Never adopt any calling or profession. By so doing a man becomes simply one of the mob, a tiny bolt in the great machinery of the state; he ceases to be master.... But though we hold aloof from all regular callings, we ought not to be inactive, but to attach great importance to occupation which is identical with idleness.... The whole secret lies in the independence, the absence of restraint. We are apt to believe that there is no art in acting unrestrained by any law; in reality the most careful calculation is required, if we are not to go astray, but to obtain enjoyment from it...." Idleness, lawlessness, enjoyment! This is the threeleaved clover which grows all over the Romanticist's field. In such a book as Eichendorff's _Das Leben eines Taugenichts_ ("Life of a Ne'er-do-Well") idleness is idealised and exalted in the person of the hero. And purposelessness is another important item, which must on no account be overlooked. It is another designation for the genius of Romanticism. "To have a purpose, to act according to that purpose, artificially to combine purpose with purpose, and thereby create new purposes, is a bad habit, which has become so deeply rooted in the foolish nature of godlike man, that he is obliged, when for once it is his desire to float aimlessly upon the stream of constantly changing images and emotions, to do even this of settled purpose.... It is very certain, my friend, that man is by nature a serious animal." (Julius to Lucinde.)